The Ultimate Guide to High Availability with MariaDB
This is a read-only copy of the MariaDB Knowledgebase generated on 2024-11-17. For the latest, interactive version please visit https://mariadb.com/kb/.

"The process /usr/libexec/mariadb-prepare-db-dir could not be executed and failed"

I can't figure out why MariaDB fails to start. I remember it was working fine yesterday. What could be the issue? 

Aug 21 13:50:46 sd-ac41-eb59.nam.nsroot.net systemd[1]: Starting MariaDB database server...
-- Subject: Unit mariadb.service has begun start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- Unit mariadb.service has begun starting up.
Aug 21 13:50:46 sd-ac41-eb59.nam.nsroot.net systemd[3960]: Failed at step USER spawning /usr/libexec/mariadb-prepare-db-dir: No such process
-- Subject: Process /usr/libexec/mariadb-prepare-db-dir could not be executed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- The process /usr/libexec/mariadb-prepare-db-dir could not be executed and failed.
--
-- The error number returned by this process is 3.
Aug 21 13:50:46 sd-ac41-eb59.nam.nsroot.net systemd[1]: mariadb.service: control process exited, code=exited status=217
Aug 21 13:50:46 sd-ac41-eb59.nam.nsroot.net systemd[1]: Failed to start MariaDB database server.
-- Subject: Unit mariadb.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- Unit mariadb.service has failed.
--
-- The result is failed.
Aug 21 13:50:46 sd-ac41-eb59.nam.nsroot.net systemd[1]: Unit mariadb.service entered failed state.
Aug 21 13:50:46 sd-ac41-eb59.nam.nsroot.net systemd[1]: mariadb.service failed.

Answer Answered by Michael Widenius in this comment.

Check that /usr/libexec/mariadb-prepare-db-dir exists and can be executed by root. Note that the right place to report bugs, problems or feature requests is not the KB but the MariaDB bug database. If the problem still exists, please provide a detailed bug report so that our developer and QA teams can try to help you with the issue.

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