Gang, I've installed MariaDB on several Debian/Ubuntu systems in the past few months, without any issues. ~2 days ago on an Unbuntu 12.10 system did an apt-get update/upgrade/dist-upgrade. I believe that MariaDB was updated in that process. After the updates, mysql was "gone" My apps couldn't find it, it wasn't running, etc. I was in a hurry so I had to fall back to the standard mysql package so not a lot of into there. I built a new Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server, added the Maria repo, did an apt-get update/ugprade/dist-upgrade. Rebooted. Here's some output... I'm stuck in this loop. root@nn01:~# apt-get install mariadb-server Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: mariadb-server : Depends: mariadb-server-5.5 but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. root@nn01:~# apt-get install mariadb-server-5.5 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: mariadb-server-5.5 : Depends: mariadb-client-5.5 (>= 5.5.28-mariadb-a1~precise) but it is not going to be installed Depends: mariadb-server-core-5.5 (>= 5.5.28-mariadb-a1~precise) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. root@nn01:~# apt-get install mariadb-client-5.5 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: mariadb-client-5.5 : Depends: libdbd-mysql-perl (>= 1.2202) but it is not going to be installed Depends: mariadb-common but it is not going to be installed Depends: libmariadbclient18 (>= 5.5.28-mariadb-a1~precise) but it is not going to be installed Depends: mariadb-client-core-5.5 (>= 5.5.28-mariadb-a1~precise) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. root@nn01:~#