ERROR 1115 (42000): Unknown character set: 'utf8mb4'

I have a MySQL dump, which I tried to restore with:

mysql -u"username" -p"password" --host="127.0.0.1" mysql_db < mysql_db

However, this threw an error:

ERROR 1115 (42000) at line 3231: Unknown character set: 'utf8mb4'

This is lines 3231-3233:

/*!50003 SET character_set_client  = utf8mb4 */ ;
/*!50003 SET character_set_results = utf8mb4 */ ;
/*!50003 SET collation_connection  = utf8mb4_general_ci */ ;

I am using MySQL 5.1.69. How can I solve this error?

Your version does not support that character set, I believe it was 5.5.3 that introduced it. You should upgrade your mysql to the version you used to export this file.

The error is then quite clear: you set a certain character set in your code, but your mysql version does not support it, and therefore does not know about it.

According to https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/charset-unicode-utf8mb4.html :

utf8mb4 is a superset of utf8

so maybe there is a chance you can just make it utf8, close your eyes and hope, but that would depend on your data, and I'd not recommend it.

You can try:

Open sql file by text editor find and replace all

utf8mb4 to utf8

Import again.

This can help:

mysqldump --compatible=mysql40 -u user -p DB > dumpfile.sql

PHPMyAdmin has the same MySQL compatibility mode in the 'expert' export options. Although that has on occasions done nothing.

If you don't have access via the command line or via PHPMyAdmin then editing the

/*!50003 SET character_set_client  = utf8mb4 */ ; 

bit to read 'utf8' only, is the way to go.

Just open your sql file with a text editor and search for 'utf8mb4' and replace with utf8.I hope it would work for you