XREF to: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/what-to-do-if-mariadb-doesnt-start/
Q: How to track events by looking at the logs? Where are they stored?
A: Named “host-name.err” and written to the data directory
Note: In my case, I didn’t see specific files like that, but did see useful files to review
-yum.log; messages-20151120, etc
Q: How do you search for the error logs, if they’re not where you think they would be?
A: mysqld –help –verbose | grep ‘datadir’ | tail -1 (Note: In my case a plug-in wasn’t working)
Q: What is the my.cnf file?
A: Contains configuration settings, ie where data directory is
Note: Important at some point to figure out how to configure my.cnf to set up the basedir, etc