how to solve this

On Fri, 27 Sep 2019 13:41:14 +0200, ZOT declaimed the following:

remove with wildcard uses the database of installed packages to determine which versions are in place and need to be removed.

install with wildcard is matching multiple versions of the packages and that likely errors out as it can not determine which package you really want.

Solution: don't use a wildcard -- specify which package version you really want installed. I suspect you should be using:

apt-get install mariadb-client mariadb-server

given the descriptions shown

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo apt-cache search mariadb dbconfig-common - framework that helps packages to manage databases dbconfig-mysql - dbconfig-common MySQL/MariaDB support libreoffice-base-drivers - Database connectivity drivers for LibreOffice libreoffice-mysql-connector - MariaDB/MySQL Connector extension for LibreOffice mariadb-backup - Backup tool for MariaDB server

mariadb-client - MariaDB database client (metapackage depending on the latest version) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ mariadb-client-10.0 - MariaDB database client binaries mariadb-client-10.3 - MariaDB database client binaries mariadb-client-core-10.0 - MariaDB database core client binaries mariadb-client-core-10.3 - MariaDB database core client binaries mariadb-common - MariaDB common metapackage mariadb-plugin-connect - Connect storage engine for MariaDB mariadb-plugin-cracklib-password-check - CrackLib Password Validation Plugin for MariaDB mariadb-plugin-gssapi-client - GSSAPI authentication plugin for MariaDB client mariadb-plugin-gssapi-server - GSSAPI authentication plugin for MariaDB server mariadb-plugin-mroonga - Mroonga storage engine for MariaDB mariadb-plugin-oqgraph - OQGraph storage engine for MariaDB mariadb-plugin-spider - Spider storage engine for MariaDB

mariadb-server - MariaDB database server (metapackage depending on the latest version) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ mariadb-server-10.0 - MariaDB database server binaries mariadb-server-10.3 - MariaDB database server binaries mariadb-server-core-10.0 - MariaDB database core server files mariadb-server-core-10.3 - MariaDB database core server files mariadb-test - MariaDB database regression test suite mariadb-test-data - MariaDB database regression test suite - data files mycli - CLI for MySQL/MariaDB pi@raspberrypi:~$

You might want (wildcard okay here, as the plugins are not versioned in the above listing)

apt-get install mariadb-plugin* dbconfig-mysql