my config includes
cat /usr/local/etc/mariadb/my.cnf
[client] default-character-set = utf8mb4 ...
[mysqld] init-connect = 'SET NAMES utf8mb4' collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci character-set-server = utf8mb4 ...
[mysql] default-character-set = utf8mb4 ...
Can't say anything about the particular bug (haven’t touched 10.4.x yet), but wanted to comment on your configuration. If everything is UTF8 imo a more simple way to "force" particular character set is to do this way: [mysqld] character-set-server = utf8mb4 collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci skip-character-set-client-handshake So the server ignores what the clients sends and you don't need to do 'SET NAMES .. ' on every connect (for example on older php versions/mysql binaries the default charset was 'latin1' and if the programmer forgot to add 'set names' query could mess up the db). rr