One thing that crops up every now and then is a failure when trying to install Joomla 1.5 on the latest servers with newer versions of MySQL.
J1.5 is quite old now and the installation script uses “TYPE=MyISAM” all over the place. TYPE has been deprecated and replaced with ENGINE. No wonder the installer fails.
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'TYPE=MyISAM' at line 29 SQL=CREATE TABLE `xxx_banner` ( `bid` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, `cid` int(11) NOT NULL default '0', `type` varchar(90) NOT NULL default 'banner', `name` TEXT NOT NULL default '', `alias` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '', `imptotal` int(11) NOT NULL default '0', `impmade` int(11) NOT NULL default '0', `clicks` int(11) NOT NULL default '0', `imageurl` varchar(100) NOT NULL default '', `clickurl` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '', `date` datetime default NULL, `showBanner` tinyint(1) NOT NULL default '0', `checked_out` tinyint(1) NOT NULL default '0', `checked_out_time` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00', `editor` varchar(150) default NULL, `custombannercode` text, `catid` INTEGER UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, `description` TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '', `sticky` TINYINT(1) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, `ordering` INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, `publish_up` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00', `publish_down` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00', `tags` TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '', `params` TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '', PRIMARY KEY (`bid`), KEY `viewbanner` (`showBanner`), INDEX `idx_banner_catid`(`catid`) ) TYPE=MyISAM
Understandably many people just give up at this stage as the message is not all that helpful. So what to do? No need to downgrade your rdbms to 5.0. Instead go to your Joomla installation folder, i.e. yoursite/installation/sql and open the joomla.sql file. Use notepad++ or your text/code editor of choice and do a replace of all “TYPE=MyISAM” changing it to “ENGINE=MyISAM”. Save the file and upload.
Run the installer again and the error will be gone, i.e. the database created correctly.
If you were looking for information on installing Joomla check this post: Installing Joomla
or if you want to know just what the heck this Joomla thing is then check this post: What is Joomla?
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Obviously an old blog post, but for those lingering in Joomla 1.5.x, it might still be worth noting that 1.5.26 (which should also have a separate security patch applied) includes the aforementioned code change in the /installation/sql/mysql/joomla.sql file.
The end of every insert statement in joomla.sql now has: ENGINE=MyISAM CHARACTER SET `utf8`;
Still, it’s highly likely your site might be hacked in 1.5.26 because of either old, insecure extensions code, or old PHP versions. Better to upgrade to the latest version of Joomla.
Hi Azurelink, yes upgrading or porting to the latest version is always the best method. The reason I still have some 1.5s is that they are read-only archived websites for the government over here. The websites are not updated but some people still look for information on them. I certainly wouldn’t recommend running a live site with any Joomla pre 3.4 – especially since Joomla is heavily targetted by hackers and script kiddies these days. Interestingly, despite thousands of attacks my 1.5s have not been hacked in more than 3 years (they are read only however so I guess that’s not a surprise). thanks for the comment!