This scirpt is ran by the systemd service.
In Fedora the service has priviledges dropped to the mysql user.
Thus "chown 0" will always fail

Never parse 'ls' output!
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/087

--- mariadb-10.4.12/scripts/mysql_install_db.sh	2020-01-26 21:43:53.000000000 +0100
+++ mariadb-10.4.12/scripts/mysql_install_db.sh_patched	2020-01-29 11:11:09.448812331 +0100
@@ -482,13 +482,16 @@ if test -n "$user"
 then
   if test -z "$srcdir" -a "$in_rpm" -eq 0 -a -d "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir"
   then
-    chown 0 "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool" && \
-    chmod 04755 "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool"
-    if test $? -ne 0
+    if [ `stat "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool" -c %u` -ne 0 ]
     then
+      chown 0 "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool" && \
+      chmod 04755 "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool"
+      if test $? -ne 0
+      then
         echo "Couldn't set an owner to '$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool'."
         echo "It must be root, the PAM authentication plugin doesn't work otherwise.."
         echo
+      fi
     fi
     chown $user "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir" && \
     chmod 0700 "$pamtooldir/auth_pam_tool_dir"