This scirpt is ran by the systemd service.

In Fedora the service has priviledges dropped to the mysql user.

Thus "chown 0" will always fail

Never parse 'ls' output!

http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/087

--- mariadb-10.4.12/scripts/mysql_install_db.sh	2020-01-26 21:43:53.000000000 +0100

+++ mariadb-10.4.12/scripts/mysql_install_db.sh_patched	2020-01-29 11:11:09.448812331 +0100

@@ -482,13 +482,16 @@ if test -n "$user"

 then

   if test -z "$srcdir" -a "$in_rpm" -eq 0

   then

-    chown 0 "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool" && \

-    chmod 04755 "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool"

-    if test $? -ne 0

+    if [ `stat "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool" -c %u` -ne 0 ]

     then

+      chown 0 "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool" && \

+      chmod 04755 "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool"

+      if test $? -ne 0

+      then

         echo "Couldn't set an owner to '$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool'."

         echo "It must be root, the PAM authentication plugin doesn't work otherwise.."

         echo

+      fi

     fi

     chown $user "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir" && \

     chmod 0700 "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir"