README.MySQL
MYSQL 8
-------
The default DB type (--with-db-type) for configure is "mysql", which
works with MySQL 8. If the MySQL 8 database or client libraries are not
yet available in your OS package system, you may need to add the
MySQL repository directly. For details, see: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/
MYSQL 5.7
---------
MySQL 5.7 has reached end of life, but it is possible to run
with extended support from Oracle. If you are still running it, specify
"--with-db-type=mysql5" when running "configure" method, i.e.
./configure --with-db-type=mysql5
This will prompt RT's installer to use a compatible version of
DBD::mysql that still supports version 5.7 and older. The latest
versions of DBD::mysql will not work with 5.7 and older.
CHARACTER SETS
--------------
Starting with RT 5.0.0, the minimum supported MySQL version is 5.7.7
because this is the first version to provide full support for 4 byte
utf8 characters in tables and indexes. Read on for details on this
change.
Starting with RT version 5.0.4, MySQL 8 is also supported.
RT 5.0.0 now defaults MySQL tables to utf8mb4, which is available in
versions before 5.7.7. However, before MySQL version 5.7.7, utf8mb4
tables could not have indexes with type VARCHAR(255): the default size
for index entries was 767 bytes, which is enough for 255 chars stored
as at most 3 chars (the utf8 format), but not as 4 bytes (utf8mb4).
5.7.7 sets the default index size to 3072 for InnoDB tables, resolving
that issue.
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/mysql/5.7/en/news-5-7-7.html#mysqld-5-7-7-feature
In MySQL, RT uses the utf8mb4 character set to support all
unicode characters, including the ones that are encoded with 4 bytes in
utf8 (some Kanji characters and a good number of emojis). The DB tables
and the RT are both set to this character set.
If your MySQL database is used only for RT, you can consider
setting the default character set to utf8mb4. This will
ensure that backups and other database access outside of RT have the
correct character set.
This is done by adding the following lines to the MySQL configuration:
[mysqld]
character-set-server = utf8mb4
[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4
You can check the values your server is using by running this command:
mysqladmin variables | grep -i character_set
Setting the default is particularly important for mysqldump, to avoid
backups to be silently corrupted.
If the MySQL DB is shared with other applications and the default
character set cannot be set to utf8mb4, the command to backup the
database can be set explicitly:
( mysqldump --default-character-set=utf8mb4 rt5 --tables sessions --no-data --single-transaction; \
mysqldump --default-character-set=utf8mb4 rt5 --ignore-table rt5.sessions --single-transaction ) \
| gzip > rt-`date +%Y%m%d`.sql.gz
Restoring a backup is done the usual way, since the character set for
all tables is set to utf8mb4, there is no further need to tell MySQL
about it:
gunzip -c rt-20191125.sql.gz | mysql -uroot -p rt5
These character set updates now allow RT on MySQL to accept and store 4-byte
characters like emojis. However, searches can still be inconsistent. You may be
able to get different or better results by experimenting with different collation
settings. For more information:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/41148052
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/charset-unicode-sets.html