MariaDB can be reverted to the fresh state by removing its data files. Say if you run MariaDB on a Debian you can do the next: systemctl stop mysql rm -rf /var/lib/mysql/* sudo -u mysql mysql_install_db systemctl start mysql For some versions of Debian, the mysql_install_db step is not necessary; when starting up if no datafiles exists MariaDB will recreate the internal scheme `mysql.*` with all default values. All leftovers like config and log files you have to clean up manually.