The problem is caused by the fact that adding the
--defaults-group-suffix option to fix MDEV-18863 causes
mysqld to read all options from the appropriate sections
of the config file, including options specific to mysqld_multi.
Reading unknown options (which are not supported by mysqld)
causes mysqld to terminate with an error.

However, the MDEV-18863 problem has been completely fixed
by passing options on the command line, and now there is no
need to specify the --defaults-group-suffix option (we just
need to give priority to options passed through the command
line, so as not to break MDEV-18863).