fyi, mysqld -V mysqld Ver 10.0.13-MariaDB for Linux on x86_64 (Source distribution) ls -al /usr/local/etc/mariadb/my.cnf /etc/my.cnf /root/.my.cnf ls: cannot access /etc/my.cnf: No such file or directory ls: cannot access /root/.my.cnf: No such file or directory -rw-r--r--+ 1 root mysql 8.7K Aug 11 17:48 /usr/local/etc/mariadb/my.cnf grep "\[client\]" /usr/local/etc/mariadb/my.cnf -A2 [client] user = root password = 'xxxxxx' mysqlshow mysqlshow: Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO) ln -sf /usr/local/etc/mariadb/my.cnf /etc/my.cnf mysqlshow mysqlshow: Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO) rm -f /etc/my.cnf ln -sf /usr/local/etc/mariadb/my.cnf /root/.my.cnf mysqlshow +------------------------------+ | Databases | +------------------------------+ | information_schema | | mysql | | performance_schema | | test | +------------------------------+