Unfortunately, Plesk doesn’t seem to have a way to upgrade MariaDB using the components in the control panel.

Attempts to add this feature didn’t work for me either despite their claims

Hint: you can add an extension from the Plesk interface named Panel.ini Editor if you want to try your luck:

The following official article on Plesk doesn’t work either

https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/12388091703703

It results in an error like this:

The repository 'https://dlm.mariadb.com/repo/maxscale/latest/apt bionic Release' does not have a Release file.

Failed to add trusted package signing keys

The Solution:

1. First create backups of all databases as .sql dump:

   MYSQL_PWD=`cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow` mysqldump -u admin --verbose --all-databases --routines --triggers > /tmp/all-databases.sql

2. Create a backup of all MySQL/MariaDB data (this is different from the above — it copies the entire current mysql/mariadb version executables):

   cp -v -a /var/lib/mysql/ /var/lib/mysql_backup

Then, follow this instead: https://mariadb.org/download/?t=repo-config&d=18.04+LTS+%22bionic%22&v=11.2&r_m=knownhost

Make sure you select your right OS version, desired MariaDB version, and a mirror closer to you is preferable.

Hints:
Use cat /etc/*-release to find out your current OS name and version.

Use sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mariadb.sources to create a file and paste the contents from second box. Ctrl+X to exit nano and Y to save file.

In the end I finished with some commands from the first article that didn’t work initially. It’s supposed to add the newly installed MariaDB version to Plesk.

6. Start the MariaDB service:

   systemctl start mariadb

7. Upgrade MySQL/MariaDB databases:

   MYSQL_PWD=`cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow` mysql_upgrade -uadmin

8. Restart MySQL/MariaDB service:

   systemctl restart mariadb

9. Execute the following commands to update package version inside Plesk:

   plesk bin service_node --update local
   plesk sbin packagemng -sdf

    

This finally worked…  after a few refreshes Plesk was showing MariaDB Version: 11.2

Let me know how it goes. Good luck!

It is required that you store all your data in Unicode format (UTF-8). New installations must be performed into databases that have their default character set as Unicode. If you are upgrading, you should perform the UTF-8 migration process (see the Admin page).

The current setup of MySQL or MariaDB is using ‘utf8’. This character set does not support four byte characters which include some emoji. Trying to use these characters will result in an error when updating a record, and any information being sent to the database will be lost Please consider changing your settings to ‘utf8mb4’. See the documentation for full details.

The Solution:

Login to mysql/mariadb via SSH using root user or the user associated with moodle db:

(All code snippets below are editable)

mysql -u moodle_user -p 123456

use moodle;

SHOW LOCAL VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_database';

--# In my case I got this:

+------------------------+---------+
| Variable_name          |  Value  |
+------------------------+---------+
| character_set_database | utf8mb3 |
+------------------------+---------+
1 row in set (0.001 sec)

--# Run the following to change to utf8mb4

ALTER DATABASE moodle CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

--# Verify again to make sure the change took effect

SHOW LOCAL VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_database';

+------------------------+---------+
| Variable_name          |  Value  |
+------------------------+---------+
| character_set_database | utf8mb4 |
+------------------------+---------+
1 row in set (0.001 sec)

Make sure in your ./config.php ‘dbcollation’ is set to ‘utf8mb4_unicode_ci’

//...

$CFG->dboptions = array (
  'dbpersist' => 0,
  'dbport' => '',
  'dbsocket' => '',
  'dbcollation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',  // 'utf8_general_ci' doesn't work
);

//...

sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

#... append to the bottom

#Moodle required
[ client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysqld]
innodb_file_format = Barracuda
innodb_file_per_table = 1
innodb_large_prefix = true

character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake

[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

systemctl restart mariadb

Let me know how it goes or if you have other solutions. Good luck!

P.S. Also, check my article on updating MariaDB since Moodle requires 10.5.6 or greater I think. Ignore the part that is about Plesk if you’re not using it — the process is exactly the same except the last step 9. is not necessary on vanilla Ubuntu or CentOS.

TLDR: Login using the built-in console to change the default password. Use the new password to SSH.

The reason you’re getting this error is because you’re trying to SSH into DigitalOcean using the default root password.

Open the Droplet back-end and find the Console button:

Now login from here with root and your default password (Paste it with Ctrl+V). It will ask you to change the password immediately. You’ll have to paste in the default password one more time. Now type in a new password twice. That’s it. You should be able to SSH with WinSCP or PuTTy without issues now using the new password. Enjoy!