-These changes are necessary because MySQL 4.1 and greater changed some
-aspects of character set handling that may result in RT failures; this
-will manifest as multiple login requests, corrupted binary attachments,
-and corrupted image custom fields, among others. In order to resolve
-this issue, the upgrade process will need to modify the schema.
+These changes are necessary because MySQL 4.1 and greater changed some aspects
+of character set handling that may result in RT failures; this will manifest
+as multiple login requests, corrupted binary attachments, and corrupted image
+custom fields, among others. In order to resolve this issue, the upgrade
+process will need to modify the schema.
+
+=over
+
+=item 1.
+
+If you are moving the database and/or upgrading MySQL
+
+=over
+
+=item 1a.
+
+Dump the database; with MySQL 4.1 and greater be sure to pass the mysqldump
+command the --default-character-set=binary option. This is necessary because
+the data was originally encoded in Latin1.
+
+=item 1b.
+
+Configure the new MySQL to use Latin1 as the default character set everywhere,
+not UTF-8. This is necessary so the import in the next step assumes the data
+is Latin1.
+
+=item 1c.
+
+Import the dump made in step 1a into the new MySQL server, using the
+--default-character-set=binary option on restore. This will ensure that the
+data is imported as bytes, which will be interpreted as Latin1 thanks to step
+1b above.
+
+=item 1d.
+
+Test that your RT works as expected on this new database.
+
+=back
+
+=item 2.
+
+Backup RT's database using --default-character-set=binary Furthermore, test
+that you can restore from this backup.
+
+=item 3.
+
+Follow instructions in the README file to step 6b.
+
+=item 4.
+
+Apply changes described in the README's step 6b, but only up to version
+3.7.87.
+
+=item 5.
+
+Apply the RT 3.8 schema upgrades. Included in RT is the script
+etc/upgrade/upgrade-mysql-schema.pl that will generate the appropriate SQL
+queries:
+
+ perl etc/upgrade/upgrade-mysql-schema.pl db user pass > queries.sql
+
+If your mysql database is on a remote host, you can run the script like this
+instead:
+
+ perl etc/upgrade/upgrade-mysql-schema.pl db:host user pass > queries.sql
+
+=item 6.
+
+Check the sanity of the SQL queries in the queries.sql file yourself, or
+consult with your DBA.
+
+=item 7.
+
+Apply the queries. Note that this step can take a while; it may also require
+additional space on your hard drive comparable with size of your tables.