I currently have my attachments stored in the filesystem but am still receiving mysql max_allowed_packet error when importing the database via SSH.
I contacted my host about increasing this limit and received this response:
cause of this error is importing a database backup file containing large
binary data. The packet setting reflects a database policy here wherein
binary data is not permitted to be stored in MySQL databases.
If your data is only plain text but there are a lot of rows in single
INSERT statements, you might try redoing the mysqldump without
--extended-insert. This is part of --opt which is on by default. You
could try using this to get the benefit of everything in --opt except for
--extended-insert.
--skip-opt --add-drop-table --add-locks --create-options --disable-keys
--lock-tables --quick --set-charset
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