Hello! Upstream packaging seems to have introduced this line 9 years ago: https://github.com/MariaDB/server/commit/cfd4fcb0bc3d469dfca74dae30d17250d65fdd91#diff-733e7d6cfbf529c0530e7b06c97071e2c7dafa6d8b673495fecdce3f1d57015bR139
> # To avoid downgrades. > touch $mysql_statedir/debian-5.5.flag Seems very unnecessary for me. The flag thing is used by both MariaDB and MySQL packaging in Debian/Ubuntu, and it is put in the /var/lib/mysql datadir. This statedir seems completely unnecessary. I would guess you can remove the 'touch $mysql_statedir'.