Change the character set

[oscar]

Hi,

Using 17.1.003, I wanna change the charset of my installation from iso-8859-1 to utf-8 (it’s an old database…) using the descriptions I found at http://community.egroupware.org/index.php?wikipage=Charset-Change.
However, after removing all applications, I receive the following error when I try to restore the database:

Invalid SQL: REPLACE INTO egw_config (config_value,config_app,config_name) VALUES ('utf-8','phpgwapi','system_charset')
Table '(database-name).egw_config' doesn't exist (1146)

This error is shown immediatly, before any restore attempt is made.
Is still still the correct way to change the characterset?

Thanks,
Oscar

[JDlugi]

Hi Oscar,

maybe a stupid question/idea.
You wrote “after removing all applications” …

in the Setup / config admin login have you done this with the help of “Step 4 - advanced application management / Manage applications” because there is a checkbox called remove - this is not the right way.

For change the char set it is necessary to use “Step 1 - simple application management / Uninstall all applications” . After this step, you will be asked if you want to do a fresh install or restore a db backup, here it is possible to mark the char set change

BE SURE that you have made a backup before!

Jürgen

[oscar]

Hi Jürgen,

I wrote remove indeed, but what I did was uninstall in Simple application management.
In fact, I left my original database intact and created a new one - the original is still untouched. I found out that didn’t work, so I copied my original database, changed the header.inc.php, uninstalled everything there but got the same error.

Regards,
Oscar

[oscar]

For those who have the same issue, here’s a workaround:
Create a backup using mysqldump and edit the resulting sql file.
There are a few occurances of the old charset that can be manually replaced by utf-8. In my case, several occurances where in tracker data; I skipped those, but but you’ll have to try and recognize the ones that are directly eGW related.
Next, load the backup back in your database and that’s it!

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