diff --git a/playbooks/roles/lodgeit/tasks/main.yaml b/playbooks/roles/lodgeit/tasks/main.yaml
index 27f3c0af6f..a172aa569b 100644
--- a/playbooks/roles/lodgeit/tasks/main.yaml
+++ b/playbooks/roles/lodgeit/tasks/main.yaml
@@ -12,13 +12,14 @@
 
 - name: Setup mariadb container
   block:
+    # NOTE(clarkb) This deliberately does not set owner/group/mode, as the
+    # mariadb container chowns this directory to be owned by a
+    # container-internal user and drops root privileges.  We don't want to
+    # reset this from outside the container.
     - name: Setup db directory
       file:
         state: directory
         path: /var/lib/lodgeit/mariadb
-        owner: root
-        group: root
-        mode: 0755
 
     - name: Set up root mariadb conf file
       template: