[Koha] Problems running koha-create on Ubuntu 16.04 with MariaDB

[Daniel Owens]

I am moving our library to a new server with Ubuntu 16.04. Following the 
instructions at 
https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Koha_on_ubuntu_-_packages, I 
installed MariaDB instead of MySQL.

When I run: sudo koha-create --create-db koha_library

The result is: ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 
'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)

I'd been wrestling with this problem for awhile before I got to this 
point because I got similar messages when trying to configure 
phpmyadmin. I can run "mysql -u root -p". However, just "mysql -u root" 
fails with the above message as well. Is there a way to tell koha-create 
to run using a password? Or am I missing something?

I am hoping someone has a quick solution.

Daniel