Debian packages for mariadb are linked to libssl however do not have ssl enable at configure stage. To improve utility of the package enabling ssl during the package configuration would be useful.

This occurs in both these versions and probably others:

5.5.25-mariadb1~squeeze
5.2.12-mariadb115~squeeze

These versions are from http://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/

mysql> show variables like '%ssl%';
-----------------------+

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$ /usr/bin/eu-readelf -d /usr/sbin/mysqld

Dynamic segment contains 39 entries:
Addr: 0x0000000000f42f78 Offset: 0xd42f78 Link to section: [ 7] '.dynstr'
Type Value
..
NEEDED Shared library: [libcrypt.so.1]
NEEDED Shared library: [libssl.so.0.9.8]
NEEDED Shared library: [libcrypto.so.0.9.8]
...