Applications and CMS ask user for username&password to create their databases and dedicated accounts. This is not solved with unattended install of MariaDB server because those programs don't use "sudo", and new Debian packaging policy seems only friendly with terminal-based configuration.
Take into account that previous behaviour of MySQL server packages was incompatible with unattended installs, because of the use of whiptail to ask for "root" password. To face this situation today: WORKAROUND A) To respect new Debian packaging and use alternate account (here "ALTERNATEROOT" as example) from applications and CMS SQL> CREATE USER ALTERNATEROOT@localhost IDENTIFIED BY *****; SQL> GRANT ALL ON *.* TO ALTERNATEROOT@localhost WITH GRANT OPTION; SQL> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; WORKAROUND B) To use old-style behaviour for "root" account, dropping 'unix_socket' plugin, with the risk of breaking privileged maintenance scripts $ sudo mysql_secure_installation SQL> UPDATE mysql.user SET plugin = '' WHERE User = 'root'; SQL> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; -- __________ I'm using this express-made address because personal addresses aren't masked enough at this mail public archive. Public archive administrator should fix this against automated addresses collectors.