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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-05T00:57:21+00:00

dump mysql db on server 1 $ mysql –version mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.1.54,

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dump mysql db on server 1

$ mysql --version
mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.1.54, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 6.2
$ mysqldump -u root -p db > db.sql

import on server 2 

$ mysql --version
mysql  Ver 14.12 Distrib 5.0.95, for unknown-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.1
$ mysql -u root -p db < db.sql
ERROR 1071 (42000) at line 807: Specified key was too long; max key length is 1000 bytes

I know there is a lot of questions and answers on this error but it still leaves me puzzled.

Can it be a version problem? I suspect no.

If I run it with –force option, it gets even wierder:

ERROR 1071 (42000) at line 807: Specified key was too long; max key length is 1000 bytes
ERROR 1146 (42S02) at line 847: Table 'db.users' doesn't exist
ERROR 1146 (42S02) at line 848: Table 'db.users' doesn't exist
ERROR 1146 (42S02) at line 849: Table 'db.users' doesn't exist
ERROR 1146 (42S02) at line 850: Table 'db.users' doesn't exist

what is going on?

I mean apart from solving this, I would like to understand what settings affect a simple dump-import act and why can those settings not be explicit in my dump file and be set t import.

I prefer not having to debug actual errors, this must be solveable on high level.

UPDATE: SOLUTION
as Frederic pointed me to the right direction. Basically my dump was trying to set db with INNODB engine, but mysql on server 2 had in /etc/my.cnf

[mysqld]
skip-innodb

by simply deleting this option and restarting mysqld, my import ran without a croak.
I am very sad such a simple thing like an unavailable engine is not worthy of warning or error rather than key length issue caused by silently falling back to myISAM. Hmm. So time to switch to posgresql? mongo? 🙂

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Sounds like innodb is disabled on the second machine, so mysql silently falls back to myisam which has different limitations: 1000 bytes per key instead of 3500

    The last time I saw something like this it was because of a configuration problem: mysql can’t setup innodb on startup so it disables innodb. Check your mysql error log, it should flag any problems encountered during startup. For example, innodb will refuse to initialize if the innodb_log_file_size setting doesn’t match the size of the log files (ib_logfile0, ib_logfile1, …)

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