I am using mariadb and I to investigate some issue I wanted to check the logs. To my surprise, log file is not generated for mariadb.

I suspect this cannot be the case so I am doubting my search skills.

MariaDB [(none)]> show variables like 'log_error'
    -> ;
+---------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+---------------+-------+
| log_error     |       |
+---------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

I have added the entry in my.cnf still above field is coming to be empty.

[root@cslcodev11-oem ~]# cat /etc/my.cnf
[mysqld]
!includedir /etc/mysqld/conf.d
datadir=/mnt/mgmt/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
tmpdir=/mnt/mgmt/var/lib/mysql_tmp
user=mysql
# Disabling symbolic-links is recommended to prevent assorted security risks
symbolic-links=0
### TRT-3229 #####
sync_binlog=1
innodb_flush_method=O_DIRECT
innodb_support_xa = 1
myisam_repair_threads = 2
myisam_recover_options = FORCE
###################
innodb_file_per_table=1
innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M
table_open_cache=256
max_heap_table_size=256M
### TRT-4685 ###
max_connections=500
################
innodb_log_file_size = 512M

[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mariadb/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
[root@cslcodev11-oem ~]# 

So, I want to know do we have any default location where these logs are getting generated, if the path cannot be read from config files.

INFO: Reference: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/error-log/

On the MariaDB Knowledge base page for the error-log there is a paragraph that states.

systemd has its own logging system, and Linux distributions running systemd may log errors there instead. To view the systemd logs, use:

# journalctl -u mariadb.

This answers the question because –log-error would be an option that could be added to MY_SPECIAL.conf file and journalctl is where mariadb logs errors by default on a systemd system.