MariaDB upgrade from 5.x to 10.x fails on CentOS 7

QUESTION: I have installed Directadmin on CentOS 7 64 bit. Everything is fine except for MariaDB version which is too old 5.5.41 (2014-12-21), and I want to update it. But it seems it's only able to update to MariaDB 10.0 (by update Custombuild options and build it). What is wrong?

I have tried many ways, but cannot update MariaDB to a higher version 10.1 or 10.2 (I searched on Directadmin forums and found that Custombuild supports 10.2 already), I tried both from 5.5 to 10.1 and from 10.0 to 10.1 but it still fails.

I also found that Custombuild tries to download package for CentOS 6 instead of 7:

Updating / installing...
   1:MariaDB-compat-10.1.29-1.el6     ################################# [ 17%]
   2:MariaDB-common-10.1.29-1.el6     ################################# [ 33%]
   3:MariaDB-client-10.1.29-1.el6     ################################# [ 50%]
   4:MariaDB-server-10.1.29-1.el6

Why is that so?

The User ID and License ID which you used during Directadmin installation are issued for CentOS 6. You need to either contact your server provider if you purchased Directadmin license from them or visit client area at directadmin.com if you purchased your license from directadmin directly.

Hosting providers which offer VPS, dedic servers might have a bulk of directadmin licenses and they are not always contain an actual OS version. For example OVH was found several times offering licenses for CentOS 6 even we rent a server with CentOS 7.

Thus, when installing MariaDB Custombuild script detects OS version via a call to directadmin:

# /usr/local/directadmin/directadmin o
Compiled on 'CentOS 6.0 64-Bit'
Compile time: Nov 17 2017 at 16:12:22
Compiled with IPv6

And if you run binaries for CentOS 6 it will try and install MariaDB from rpm packages for CentOS 6. 

Possible solution

If you run CentOS 7 server with a directadmin compiled for CentOS 6. Follow the suggested steps in order to solve the issue:

1. install binaries for CentOS 7 using updateda.sh:

cd /root/
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/poralix/directadmin-utils/master/core/updateda.sh
chmod 755 updateda.sh
./updateda.sh stable --os=c9

You are free to use the suggested script to update the binaries, alternatively do it manually per this guide: https://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=29

2. change OS version in your Directadmin license at https://directadmin.com/clients/

3. download new DA license

You can follow the steps straight-forward, or run steps this way: 2, 3, 1.

IMPORTANT: you should make sure you downloaded a new updated license to your server, and make sure you installed the correct binaries of directadmin.

Update MariaDB

As soon as you install directadmin binaries for CentOS you can update MariaDB as usual:

./build update
./build mysql

That's it.