For the last 6 hours I have been trying to install MariaDB on my Raspberry Pi Zero.
I am using the latest Raspbian Stretch.
The problem is that the configuration menu for MariaDB doesn't show up during installation (which I believe it should) and it doesn't ask me to set the root password. After installation I cannot login to the MariaDB server with mysql using any credentials, but if I run mysql with root priviliges (sudo mysql) it lets me in without any form of authentication.
I tried running mysql_secure_installation after install, but it didn't help.
By the way I am trying to install phpMyAdmin.
EDIT: I ended up using Raspbian Jessie, and the configuration dialog popped up as it should, and I could configure the password, and everything worked perfectly fine.
I am (and probably others too) still looking for a solution to this though. I also noticed that on Stretch the debian-sys-maint user wasn't created either, and /etc/mysql/debian.cnf was containing a bad login (user root with no pass).