I know that if you upgrade MariaDB, the system database will break as the sandboxing was never quite complete. Without the system database, a lot of the reports won't work, neither will the paid version to Roundcube (the free one will) or Kopano, Nextcloud or any other app which uses the system-database.

Nick,

Thank you for your responses. I just decided to reinstall the vmware image and everything is working fine now.

However I do have a quick question. In your experience with the MariaDB and ClearOS are their any issues using the latest version MariaDB.

Thanks

You still have not posted your log file or "journalctl -xe" from straight after the failure. I don't know why I bother replying.

Google the [ERROR] lines. It is all I can do. If it was working before, there is now something corrupt or a permission has changed, but be careful if you have information there that you want to keep.

Also it looks like you have updated MariaDB from outside the ClearOS repos. Updating MariaDB like this breaks system-mariadb. Who knows what else it has done. I'm afraid you are on your own here.

[root@server ~]# systemctl status mariadb -l
● mariadb.service - MariaDB 10.1.48 database server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mariadb.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/mariadb.service.d
└─migrated-from-my.cnf-settings.conf
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2020-12-16 18:33:24 EST; 1h 53min ago
Docs: man:mysqld(8)
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/library/systemd/
Process: 1087 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/mysqld $MYSQLD_OPTS $_WSREP_NEW_CLUSTER $_WSREP_START_POSITION (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Process: 1018 ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c [ ! -e /usr/bin/galera_recovery ] && VAR= || VAR=`cd /usr/bin/..; /usr/bin/galera_recovery`; [ $? -eq 0 ] && systemctl set-environment _WSREP_START_POSITION=$VAR || exit 1 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 969 ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c systemctl unset-environment _WSREP_START_POSITION (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 1087 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Dec 16 18:33:23 server.local mysqld[1087]: 2020-12-16 18:33:23 140142270855424 [Note] Plugin 'FEEDBACK' is disabled.
Dec 16 18:33:23 server.local mysqld[1087]: 2020-12-16 18:33:23 140142270855424 [ERROR] Could not open mysql.plugin table. Some plugins may be not loaded
Dec 16 18:33:23 server.local mysqld[1087]: 2020-12-16 18:33:23 140141523855104 [Note] InnoDB: Dumping buffer pool(s) not yet started
Dec 16 18:33:24 server.local mysqld[1087]: 2020-12-16 18:33:24 140142270855424 [ERROR] Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.servers' doesn't exist
Dec 16 18:33:24 server.local mysqld[1087]: 2020-12-16 18:33:24 140142270855424 [Note] Server socket created on IP: '::'.
Dec 16 18:33:24 server.local mysqld[1087]: 2020-12-16 18:33:24 140142270855424 [ERROR] Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.user' doesn't exist
Dec 16 18:33:24 server.local systemd[1]: mariadb.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Dec 16 18:33:24 server.local systemd[1]: Failed to start MariaDB 10.1.48 database server.
Dec 16 18:33:24 server.local systemd[1]: Unit mariadb.service entered failed state.
Dec 16 18:33:24 server.local systemd[1]: mariadb.service failed.
[root@server ~]#

Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

Also what about the "journalctl -xe" (which must be done straight after the failure) and the logs?

So, here is the crazy thing. I had this some problem before and the fix was to increase the memory on the VMware instance. However, I've up the memory to 6gigs so it doesn't appear to be a memory problem.

See output below.

[root@server system-mysql]# systemctl status mariadb.service
● mariadb.service - MariaDB database server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mariadb.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2020-12-15 21:52:10 EST; 3min 54s ago
Process: 35363 ExecStartPre=/usr/libexec/mariadb-prepare-db-dir %n (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Dec 15 21:52:10 server.local systemd[1]: mariadb.service: control...
Dec 15 21:52:10 server.local systemd[1]: Failed to start MariaDB ...
Dec 15 21:52:10 server.local systemd[1]: Unit mariadb.service ent...
Dec 15 21:52:10 server.local systemd[1]: mariadb.service failed.
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.
[root@server system-mysql]#

So what have you done about the error message? Have you tried what it says? Have you looked in the mariadb, messages and system logs for clues?