Actually, if you read the script /etc/rc.d/rc.mariadb you'll notice that it contains all the information you need to get started.
You'll also notice that the command to run as root which will initialize the database, accepts a parameter which makes the “chown” command obsolete:
mysql_install_db --user=mysql
Nevertheless, many people won't expect that documentation to be part of the actual rc script so thanks for adding it to our wiki 
— Eric Hameleers 2014/11/18 13:08
Maybe it would be useful to readers if this was pointed out on the page itself. I at least didn't look at the discussion page and this would have saved me some searching the web for more info. – Beni aka navigium 2016/06/19
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Server listening to localhost
I found this article very useful, thank you. One thing I missed was that it didn't tell me that by default MariaDB only listens on a Unix socket. For my application, I needed it to listen to TCP connections on localhost. After searching the web, I realized that this is in fact documented in /etc/rc.d/rc.mariadb. You only need to comment out the line:
SKIP="--skip-networking"
Maybe it would help the reader if this fact was mentioned on the page. – Beni aka navigium 2016/06/19
Aaditya, the dot in “chown -R mysql.mysql” actually is not a typo. It is normal syntax, and the colon instead of the dot is just an equal alternative.
— Eric Hameleers 2018/01/02 18:14 (UTC)
Indeed it is not a typo, however, it's worth noting that a dot is perfectly valid character in a valid username, so the colon is a better choice to use for chown user:group operations. — Robby Workman