[CentOS] Install Mariadb on Centos 7 fails

Folks

I'm having problems installing Mariadb in Centos 7.


Here's what I did:

0)  Become root
1)  Make sure that mariadb and mysql are NOT installed.
2)  Delete residual libs
          rm -rf /var/lib/mysq*
3)  yum install -y mariadb-server
     installed mariadb-5.5.50-1.el7_2.x86_64 from the Centos 
'updates' repository
4)  systemctl start mariadb
5)  systemctl status mariadb

All works well until step 5, where I get the result:



# systemctl status mariadb
? mariadb.service - MariaDB database server
    Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mariadb.service; enabled; 
vendor preset: disabled)
    Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2016-09-22 17:46:38 
PDT; 4min 3s ago
  Main PID: 16261 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Sep 22 17:46:37 goat.xxx.com mysqld_safe[16261]: 
/usr/bin/mysqld_safe: line 139: /var/log/mysqld.log: Permission denied
Sep 22 17:46:37 goat.xxx.com mysqld_safe[16261]: 
/usr/bin/mysqld_safe: line 183: /var/log/mysqld.log: Permission denied
Sep 22 17:46:37 goat.xxx.com mysqld_safe[16261]: touch: cannot touch 
`/var/log/mysqld.log': Permission denied
Sep 22 17:46:37 goat.xxx.com mysqld_safe[16261]: chown: cannot access 
`/var/log/mysqld.log': No such file or directory
Sep 22 17:46:37 goat.xxx.com mysqld_safe[16261]: chmod: cannot access 
`/var/log/mysqld.log': No such file or directory
Sep 22 17:46:37 goat.xxx.com systemd[1]: mariadb.service: main 
process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Sep 22 17:46:38 goat.xxx.com systemd[1]: mariadb.service: control 
process exited, code=exited status=1
Sep 22 17:46:38 goat.xxx.com systemd[1]: Failed to start MariaDB 
database server.
Sep 22 17:46:38 goat.xxx.com systemd[1]: Unit mariadb.service entered 
failed state.
Sep 22 17:46:38 goat.xxx.com systemd[1]: mariadb.service failed.
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.
[root at goat ~]#

My environment is a Centos 7 installation running as a VM inside 
Vmware, and is not a production system.  It is updated nightly.

When I examined the files alluded to,

   /var/log/mysqld.log
  does not exist
but
   /var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log
  exists and is empty.

Adivce would be appreciated

Thanks

David