How to migrate pads to new etherpad

[BettinaKr]

Hi,

I set up a new etherpad server (ubuntu 22.04) and planned to migrate my old etherpad (runs on ubuntu 18.04) to the new server.

On the new server, etherpad is running fine, but when I try to dump the old database (mariadb) and import it to the new server, etherpad doesn't start anymore.

when I do

sytemctl start etherpad
systemctl status etherpad

it returns:

Apr 06 15:13:22 web04 node[15468]:     at Logger.isLevelEnabled (/opt/etherpad/etherpad-lite/src/node_modules/log4js/lib/logger.js:66:21)
Apr 06 15:13:22 web04 node[15468]:     at Logger.log (/opt/etherpad/etherpad-lite/src/node_modules/log4js/lib/logger.js:54:13)
Apr 06 15:13:22 web04 node[15468]:     at exports.Database.init (/opt/etherpad/etherpad-lite/src/node_modules/ueberdb2/databases/mysql_db.js:103:19)
Apr 06 15:13:22 web04 node[15468]:     at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
Apr 06 15:13:22 web04 node[15468]:     at async exports.Database.init (/opt/etherpad/etherpad-lite/src/node_modules/ueberdb2/lib/CacheAndBufferLayer.js:284:5)
Apr 06 15:13:22 web04 node[15468]:     at async exports.init (/opt/etherpad/etherpad-lite/src/node/db/DB.js:41:3)
Apr 06 15:13:22 web04 node[15468]:     at async exports.start (/opt/etherpad/etherpad-lite/src/node/server.js:142:5)
Apr 06 15:13:22 web04 node[15468]: [2023-04-06 15:13:22.913] [INFO] server - Exiting...
Apr 06 15:13:22 web04 node[15468]: [2023-04-06 15:13:22.913] [INFO] server - Waiting for Node.js to exit...
Apr 06 15:13:22 web04 node[15468]: [2023-04-06 15:13:22.971] [INFO] plugins - npm --version: 6.14.15

How can I just move my old pads to the new etherpad - everything else works perfectly?

Thank you

[BettinaKr]

Ok, I was able to solve the problem.
Reason was a different charset.
Old charset was utf8mb3, new charset is utf8mb4.
Therefore, after importing the old database I had to execute the following queries in mysql:

ALTER DATABASE `mydatabase` CHARACTER SET = utf8mb4 COLLATE = utf8mb4_bin;
ALTER TABLE `mydatabase`.`store` CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_bin;
ALTER TABLE `mydatabase`.`store` CHANGE `key` `key` varchar(100) CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_bin NOT NULL;
ALTER TABLE `mydatabase`.`store` CHANGE `value` `value` longtext CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_bin NOT NULL;

Hope this might help others with the same problem.

All the best.