phpMyAdmin + character set + mySQL

[Dynam]

Ok, here is a brief description of a problem that has been troubling me for almost a week now. I've been contacting powweb's support but no one seems to be interested in my problem :( so I come to seek your advice:

I want a copy of one of my mySQL databases which contains Chinese data. And the dump generated using powweb's phpMyAdmin sucks -- all the Chinese data are messed up. I'm quite sure my data are encoded in utf8 (as WordPress can read and display them correctly) but powweb's phpMyAdmin split my utf8 data into some monster latin1 characters which cannot be converted back.

I tried so many tricks and none works. The closest solution is to use a hacked phpMyAdmin (in which the MySQL charset setting is changed to 'latin1' and installed on my own webspace). I can read all my Chinese data properly using this hacked phpMyAdmin, but when I try to export my database, I get this error message:

export.php: Missing parameter: what (FAQ 2.8)
export.php: Missing parameter: export_type (FAQ 2.8)

The FAQ in the documentation of phpMyAdmin doesn't seem to address my problem as my setting is pretty much a default setting. I wonder if it's a server side problem/ permission?

Have you ever tried to install phpMyAdmin on your own space? If so, can you connect remotely to and properly with powweb's mySQL databases? Any suggestion to solve this? Your advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

P.S. If you think I should post this thread to the PHP forum, please let me know.

[ChaosKaizer]

I had simmiliar prob too but not chinse char,

there is new release of PMA 2.9.1rc1 i guess u could try & installed it in your host -> there is kb articles regarding how u can install PMA at the support center (sorry forgot the links)

[agridoc]

I discovered this problem yesterday. I am running a test forum with UTF-8 and I had to convert added tables and their fields to UTF-8.

I did a backup and restore and Greek characters were gone. I tested quite a few times. The backup is correct the restore is wrong. The same backup opens correctly, if renamed to txt, as a UTF-8 text, restores correctly in a local Apache in my PC and in my old platform (yes I logged in my Legacy OPS account and everything worked correctly, as usual).

I will try to contact support. I hope I won't get the excellent :D Endurance support that I had for my upload - download and email problems :p

I guess I have to be happy that the backup works correctly elsewhere :D

It is not a version problem, works OK with older and newer versions, it is in the way PHPAdmin is setup and works.

[agridoc]

Well good news are that chat support has reduced responce time. Support staff are really trying to understand.

The bad news are that real solutions for real problems are yet to come. I hope things will be better as the new system (yes it' s a new system with old customers) gradually gets stabilized.

[agridoc]

It took almost 2 weeks but the problem seems to have been fixed now.

After quite a few messages in support and chats Powweb admitted that there was a problem with UTF-8 in the system. The final message was

Thank you for contacting us.

Please note that our platform does not have the same level of support for unicode that legacy had. Our engineers are researching our support for unicode and how to improve it. Right now we can't do much about this issue.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

To be honest I was very disappointed with the reply. I thought the problem was not in the system but in phpMyAdmin setup. UTF-8 worked OK except database restore with phpMyAdmin. I was also afraid that because of this error even a latin-1 database with foreign characters would not be restored properly because of improper read of backup.

To check the above I did a copy of an old SMF test install in another dir and set it up for another database. I used a backup from my previous server and the restore was OK. So I said it' s OK at least for my working forum.

Then I did again a restore of a UTF-8 database backup that didn't restore properly and this time everything was OK!

I wll never be able to know if a latin-1 database restore would work properly before the changes made by Powweb but the significant thing is that the phpMyAdmin restore problem has been fixed. Powweb thank you very much for this.

This gives hope that other problems will be fixed too. I wouldn' t like to change host, I hope the system will gradually reach the old level and later surpass it. However a lot of work has to be made for this to come.

I hope that a cure for the PHP upload and download problems with SMF will be found soon too.