Hi I have been struggling to get mariadb to work. My problems have been either the server is very erratic, usually will not start it. After trying a complete reinstall I can not install the mariadb-server-5.2 package either from the repository or from a deb. I am using Ubuntu/Pinguy 11.04. The installation results from apt-get or aptitude are sudo aptitude install mariadb-server-5.2 The following NEW packages will be installed: mariadb-server-5.2 0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 21 not upgraded. Need to get 13.6 MB of archives. After unpacking 30.8 MB will be used. Get:1 http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/mariadb/repo/5.2/ubuntu/ natty/main mariadb-server-5.2 amd64 5.2.7-mariadb101~natty [13.6 MB] Fetched 13.6 MB in 4s (2,733 kB/s) Preconfiguring packages ... (Reading database ... 427308 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking mariadb-server-5.2 (from .../mariadb-server-5.2_5.2.7-mariadb101~natty_amd64.deb) ... Aborting downgrade from (at least) 5.3 to 5.2. If are sure you want to downgrade to 5.2, remove the file /var/lib/mysql/debian-*.flag and try installing again. dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/mariadb-server-5.2_5.2.7-mariadb101~natty_amd64.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/mariadb-server-5.2_5.2.7-mariadb101~natty_amd64.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) A package failed to install. Trying to recover: I tried MySQL 5.1.7 from the Ubuntu repository and got the same results. Searching various forums/online information has not turned up an answer including MySQL and Ubuntu. -- Jay Lozier jslozier@gmail.com