Change MariaDB encoding from uft8 to utf8mb4

ahmed.mahmoud 2020-09-23 11:38:12 UTC #1

Keywords: MariaDB - Google Cloud Platform - Technical issue - Other
Description:
I am using Bitnami Moodle on Google VMs. After a fresh installation, Moodle environment check shows that my MariaDB encoding needs to be changed from uft8 to utf8mb4 to enable emojis in chat and other symbols. How to do that ?

evanescent 2020-09-23 17:19:04 UTC #2

Hi @ahmed.mahmoud,

I'm facing the same problem. I also tried the fixes described by @jariza, jota and andy.vdg from 2018, but with no luck of getting rid of the message in moodles environment check - change from utf8 to utf8mb4.

And I also understand that "the impact of the issue is moderate" as jariza stated 2018. Emojis is not a big thing, but you see I'm making a moodle for children being stuck at home in this pandemic, and sharing their emotions would be easier for them.

I also tried to add the mariadb environment setting in the docker-compose.yml file:
MARIADB_CHARACTER_SET=utf8mb4
MARIADB_COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_ci
but moodles environment check is still complaining.

Maybe there is a more up to date solution for the problem?

ahmed.mahmoud 2020-09-23 17:57:02 UTC #4

Hi @evanescent
Thanks for sharing this. I tried that solution as well but never worked, and I couldn't find any more recent one.
I am facing a different challenge than emojis ... Me and my students are from Egypt. So in the Arabic, lesson, when I try to type numbers in Arabic, I get standard English numbers format. So I thought it might be related to the encoding, although it is a long shot, but gotta try anyway.

michiel 2020-09-24 07:34:46 UTC #5

Hi @ahmed.mahmoud,

Can you try the solution from this post?

https://community.bitnami.com/t/howto-utf8mb4-conversion/62787/3

Regards,
Michiel

ahmed.mahmoud 2020-09-24 07:49:20 UTC #6

Hi @michiel

Yes me and @evanescent already tried it.

michiel 2020-09-25 09:55:42 UTC #7

Hi @ahmed.mahmoud,

Can you try this command:

sudo php /opt/bitnami/moodle/admin/cli/mysql_collation.php --collation=utf8mb4_unicode_ci

Regards,
Michiel

ahmed.mahmoud 2020-09-26 10:55:10 UTC #8

Hi @michiel

Is this the exact same command that was mentioned in the solution we already tried ? If yes, then yea already tried that.

Best

michiel 2020-09-28 15:08:33 UTC #9

Hi @ahmed.mahmoud,

Can you check the database encoding with the following command:

SELECT default_character_set_name FROM information_schema.SCHEMATA
-> WHERE schema_name = "bitnami_moodle";

Regards,
Michiel

ahmed.mahmoud 2020-10-01 12:23:28 UTC #10

Hi @michiel,

the command shows uft8 as I mentioned in the original post.

Best

jota 2020-10-02 09:38:13 UTC #11

Hi @ahmed.mahmoud,

I just launched a fresh instance of Bitnami Moodle in Google and run the PHP command

sudo php /opt/bitnami/moodle/admin/cli/mysql_collation.php --collation=utf8mb4_unicode_ci

It finished successfully

...
mdl_workshopform_rubric_config           - CONVERTED
    layout                               - NO CHANGE
mdl_workshopform_rubric_levels           - CONVERTED
    definition                           - NO CHANGE
Converted: 428, skipped: 1119, errors: 0

and the database information was changed too

MariaDB [(none)]> SELECT default_character_set_name FROM information_schema.SCHEMATA WHERE schema_name = "bitnami_moodle";
+----------------------------+
| default_character_set_name |
+----------------------------+
| utf8mb4                    |
+----------------------------+
1 row in set (0.000 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]>

Did you get any error when running the PHP command?

ahmed.mahmoud 2020-10-02 17:10:18 UTC #12

Hi @jota,

Nope. It finished successfully as it did with you. Did you check the site administration > Server > Environment for the UFT8 warning ?

jota 2020-10-05 09:21:58 UTC #13

Hi @ahmed.mahmoud,

I managed to fix that warning by following the app's documentation.

https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/MySQL_full_unicode_support

There are some extra steps to modify the default character set in MariaDB and update all the tables with that information. Let us know if you have any questions.

Note: the config.php file is at /opt/bitnami/moodle/config.php and you will need to restart all the services later (sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart)

Happy to help!

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Database read error after encoding update from utf8 to uft8mb4

system 2020-10-19 09:22:06 UTC #14

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