Sandra,
I might have found the problem with a bit of troubleshooting and help from ChatGPT.
I tried importing the db manually into my php app on my cloud server:
Import – -------------------------------------------------------- – – Table structure for table gibbonPersonPhoto – CREATE TABLE gibbonPersonPhoto ( gibbonPersonPhotoID int(12) UNSIGNED ZEROFILL NOT NULL, gibbonSchoolYearID int(3) UNSIGNED ZEROFILL NOT NULL, gibbonPersonID int(10) UNSIGNED ZEROFILL NOT NULL, personImage varchar(255) NOT NULL, gibbonPersonIDCreated int DEFAULT NULL, timestamp timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci Error in query (1273): Unknown collation: ‘utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci’ 156 queries executed OK. (0.955 s)
ChatGPT said:
Perfect, that’s exactly the error we needed 
You’ve just proved the root cause:
CREATE TABLE gibbonPersonPhoto (
…
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci
Error in query (1273): Unknown collation: ‘utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci’
1. What’s actually going wrong
- utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci is a MySQL 8-only collation (it became the default coll. in MySQL 8).
- MariaDB 10.11 does not implement that collation name, so it throws ERROR 1273: Unknown collation ‘utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci’.
So:
- v30’s gibbon.sql was generated assuming MySQL 8 (and uses utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci).
- You’re installing on MariaDB 10.11.15, which can do utf8mb4, but not that specific collation.
- The installer runs fine for the first 156 queries, then hits this table (first one with that explicit collation) and dies. That’s why step 2 “populate database” fails.
The on-screen messages:
Errors occurred in populating the database …
Installation failed: The file config.php already exists …
are just the installer reacting to that failed import.
2. Two ways to fix it
You now have two realistic options:
Option A (cleanest long-term): install v30 on MySQL 8+ instead of MariaDB
- This lines up with Gibbon’s v30 requirement of MySQL 8.0+.
- On a MySQL 8 server, utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci is valid and everything “just works”.
(My host only supports MariaDB for PHP applications.)
Option B (practical on your current server): patch gibbon.sql (and demo SQL) for MariaDB
Since MariaDB doesn’t know utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci, the standard workaround is to search-and-replace that collation with one MariaDB supports, like utf8mb4_unicode_ci or utf8mb4_general_ci. This is the same trick people use when importing MySQL-8 dumps into MariaDB.
So I did a search and replace on utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci.
The manual db import did not fail this time, nor did the GUI installation using the updated gibbon.sql. v30 installation successful.
Thanks
