A student did the Lab and then ran the grading script.  The results were
rather strange.  (See below)

Passed client installed on desktop and server (but got error message
saying .ssh/gradingkey is not there ... it isn't).  Failed the next
several steps, and then the rest of the checks (not shown below - see
attachment for full grading output) passed.

Anyone seen this before?  Have any ideas?

I've seen that before if the student runs mysql_secure_installation after
running lab mariadb setup. The grading script assumes that root's 
password hasn't been set for mariadb. While there might be a simpler way 
to do this, the following should remove root's password from within mysql:

MariaDB [(none)]> use mysql;
MariaDB[(mysql)]> update user set password=null where user='root';
MariaDB[(mysql)]> flush privileges;

Then have the student try running the grading script again.