Akeeba restore error – 1118 – Row size too large (>8126) [solution]

When restoring an Akeeba backup of a WordPress site the restore process was interrupted with the error message saying 1118 – Row size too large (>8126).

Solution:

• Use SSH to log in to your database server
• Edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf or if you use a config file under /etc/mysql/conf.d, edit that one
• Under the [mysqld] section add:
  internal_tmp_disk_storage_engine=MyISAM
innodb_strict_mode = 0

• Restart mysql:
  service mysql restart

Edit: After you successfully restored the site, remove the lines and restart MySQL. I didn’t do this and later tried to move another site from this server to another using Akeeba. When the site was installed on the new server, I just got an error message saying “Error Establishing a Database Connection”. To resolve it, I had to go back to the above server, remove the lines from mysql config, restart MySQL, make a new backup of the site using Akeeba and successfully restore it on the new server.

Credit: The solution to this problem was found here.