Install MariaDB 10.1.1 on Debian 7.7

MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL that has some neat additional features such as virtual columns that will be discussed in future tutorials. There are many reasons to use MariaDB that many others have covered fairly well and I recommend that you go read them.

Why MariaDB 10.+ and not 5.5?

"MariaDB 10.0 is the current stable version of MariaDB. It is built on the MariaDB 5.5 series with backported features from MySQL 5.6 and entirely new features not found anywhere else." - [source]

Why Debian?

Need to reboot less often due to kernel updates (Ubuntu), and I have dropped support for CentOS.

Installation

Just run either of the following scripts:

curl -s http://scripts.programster.org/scripts/5 | sudo bash

# Ensure your system is up to date.
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y

# Find your appropriate repo by making selections at:
# https://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/#mirror=somerset&distro=Debian&distro_release=wheezy&version=10.1
# For me in the UK the appropriate code is:
sudo apt-get install python-software-properties -y
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xcbcb082a1bb943db -y
sudo add-apt-repository 'deb http://mirror.stshosting.co.uk/mariadb/repo/10.1/debian wheezy main' -y

# Now just update and install mariadb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mariadb-server -y

I created and maintain scripts.technostu.com but it's hosted scripts could be submitted by anybody and can be malicious. This one was submitted by me.
If you want to submit a script, then please use the frontend for ease of use rather than the API which is not yet documented.

Password Prompt

You will be prompted for a root password, choose something random/strong then enter the password again to confirm.

Optional Extra Steps

I recommand you run the following command to secure your database after installation.

mysql_secure_installation

This will allow you to easily:

• remove annonymous users
• disallow remote root login (hopefully your applications don't use the root user!)
• remove the test database
• reload privileges

References

The image I used was a custom editing of the logos you can download from the MariaDB site