14 January 2010, 6:45

Hello,

I have seen other posts about this problem, but I could not find the solution:

Despite having set my mysql db with an encoding utf8_general_ci can not seem to overcome the error message:

You are not using a UTF-8 database. Mahara stores all data as UTF-8 internally. Please drop and re-create your database using UTF-8 encoding.

where error

thanks for your attention

14 January 2010, 7:22

Hi Fabio

Create your mysql database with your usual procedure, dump the mysql database then open the mysql dump file using Notepad2 or something similar. If you are using notepad2 click on save and go to encoding within the file menu and select UTF-8 then click Save to overwrite the file.

Once saved with the UTF-8 encoding, restore this mysql dump and try the Mahara install again. This worked for me using notepad2 by the way.

Hope it helps,

Ali 

14 January 2010, 10:25

14 January 2010, 16:21

It always works for me if I use the following command to create the database:

CREATE DATABASE mahara DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;

08 February 2010, 5:51

I had the same problem and your solution, Richard, is simple and perfect !!

Thanks

05 March 2010, 9:28

I have the exact same problem. Check with phpmyAdmin on the database it is UTF-8. Any other solution or suggestion ? and i tried deleting the database with phpmyadmin then use query screen to create using this statement CREATE DATABASE mahara DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8. and #1044 error.

 .Any other suggestions. ? 

16 June 2010, 14:32

I have found a very simple fix. In PHPMyAdmin , I navigated to the database associated with Mahara.

Next, I clicked on the tab, Operations. At the bottom, I changed the Collation from latin1_general_ci to utf8_general_ci. Next, clicked Go.

I navigated back to the page that stated "You are not using a UTF-8 database. Mahara stores all data as UTF-8 internally. Please drop and re-create your database using UTF-8 encoding" and refreshed it. I was able to proceed with the installation.

20 September 2010, 11:43

Thanks Sina,

What is not at all obvious about this is that the front page of myPHPadmin gives the localhost settings as... MySQL connection collation: utf8_general_ci

So you would be forgiven for thinking that it would be the default for all future tables, but as you pointed out, you seem to change the default settings in Operations! Its odd too that the install doesn't specify this its CREATE TABLE commands. Perhaps that would have the potential to upset other parallel databases. It is also true that some of the other solutions above, such as specifying this in a CREATE DATABASE command, would work if it were not that on a shared server you may be blocked from using this command.

Well, at least that's sorted!

03 November 2010, 11:12

Thanks Sina and John - I got here via a search because I had the exact same problem when  setting up a new Mahara 1.3 - I had assumed my database was already utf8 for the reason John said and I was able to fix it using Sina's suggestion