I've run into this problem before moving my database from one environment to another and a colleague helped me make some necessary config changes to MYSQL. It's happening again and I did not document how to fix this. 

Problem is that I'm trying to upload the database on the remote server and I'm getting a Mysql error: "ERROR 1709 (HY000) at line 166: Index column size too large. The maximum column size is 767 bytes." Any help would be appreciated. 

 

This has to do with MySQL Database 4-byte UTF-8 support (see Status report for your site). More info:

Comments

My colleague tells me that we fixed the problem last time by editing the actual database dump and changing the character type from utf8mb4 to utf8.

In vim: `:%s/utf8mb4/utf8/g`

I've not tested this yet as I found a work-a-round last night. I expect to run into this problem again. 

Sounds right -- I've run into this a few times as well when developing on my server (with the 4-byte UTF-8 support activated, e.g. for emojis) and then launching on a separate server that does not have 4-byte UTF-8 support.

In fact it just happened to me and I was going to document it here, but you already have. :)

Interestingly, I have run into this issue now. I did what you described to import the database to a server that didn't support 'utf8mb4' and then found out that this organization had the capability to upgrade their MariaDB installation to a version that supports it. Now trying to run the upgrade script to make the database 'utf8mb4' again errors out:

PDOException: SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1064 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server version for the right syntax to use near '"Array%"' at line 1: SHOW TABLES LIKE "Array%"; Array ( ) in system_utf8mb4_convert_form_submit() (line 2499 of /path/core/modules/system/system.admin.inc).

I'm hoping nobody has done any major changes since I imported it the other day, in which case I'll just reimport the original again and be all set. Otherwise... ?