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Rowan Sims
Rowan Sims
4,898 Points

Problem importing database file to dreamhost

I've followed the instructions in this video carefully, but when I try to import the sql file to the database that I've created I get an error for some reason:

Error SQL query:

Table structure of table wp_commentmeta

CREATE TABLE wp_commentmeta (

meta_id BIGINT( 20 ) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT , comment_id BIGINT( 20 ) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0', meta_key VARCHAR( 255 ) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL , meta_value LONGTEXT COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci, PRIMARY KEY ( meta_id ) , KEY comment_id ( comment_id ) , KEY meta_key ( meta_key ( 191 ) ) ) ENGINE = INNODB AUTO_INCREMENT =3 DEFAULT CHARSET = utf8mb4 COLLATE = utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

MySQL said: Documentation

1273 - Unknown collation: 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci'

Most of this is gibberish to me, so I'm hoping somebody else might be able to help me out with this. Maybe Zac Gordon?

Thanks Rowan

2 Answers

It is apparently a problem with phpMyAdmin which is usually solved by deleting browser cookies related to the site it is running on. With Dreamhost, you are probably using their hosted phpMyAdmin instance, so you won't be able to hack the files as the linked solution suggests.

There are likely several tools for doing this depending on your operating system. I would personally use a console terminal to run a .sql file on the database. With mysql or mariadb tools installed, I would save my sql commands in commands.sql and run:

mysql -h "the database server name" -u my_username -p my_database < commands.sql

If I couldn't run this command on a local machine, I could always use ssh or puTTY to log into Dreamhost, upload the file, and run the command from there.

Jonathan Romine
Jonathan Romine
9,344 Points

When you exported the db , did you export in .gzip auto increments?

Rowan Sims
Rowan Sims
4,898 Points

I just followed the instructions in the video. I've done it before without any dramas.