service mysql status command fails when run by normal user

Command "service mysql status" fails when executed by a normal user. (It works for other services.) There are two reasons for this. First, the process id file is created with permissions 660, so it can't be read (most process id files have permissions 622). Second, the "kill -0" command used in the service file to determine if a process is active fails when executed by an arbitrary user.

Attached are a script demonstrating the problem and its output. Also attached are the my.cnf file and the service file (/etc/init.d/mariadb). The service file is lightly modified from the distributed support-files/mysql-server.

mariadb was installed from file mariadb-5.5.36-linux-x86_64.tar.gz