Mariadb is recommended to run mysql_secure_installation to set a root password and disable access form the network and remove all the evaluation databases and users.
When I found the errors in the journal (systemd) that logrotate could not authenticate against the root mariadb account to complete the log rotate.
A lot of searching later I found this page --> https://mariadb.com/kb/en/authentication-plugin-unix-socket/
After a bit of reading I found the server needs to have the --unix-socket=ON option to allow the user of logrotate to access the password for the root account of the database.
the format of the /root/.my.cnf file is as follows:
[client]
user = root
password = "YOUR_PASSWORD"
And that's it...