[Mediawiki-l] MySQL problem with MediaWiki > 1.4?

[Geoffrey Alan Washburn]

   Hi, our system administrators recently upgraded the version of MySQL 
they are running and one of the wikis I run has begun failing.  I have 
another MediaWiki running 1.4.x and it doesn't seem to have any 
problems, but my wiki running 1.5.2 began failing reporting messages 
like  "Error in fetchObject(): MySQL server has gone away".  I tried 
installing a newer version of PHP (5.1.6), which didn't work.  I also
tried upgrading to MediaWiki 1.7.1, which seems to be working a little 
better, but it fails before it writes the LocalSettings.php file.
Does anyone have any ideas of what to try next?

Alternately is there a tool that I could use to do dump all the wiki 
pages to something vaguely like the MediaWiki markup such that I could 
just start over completely from scratch if needed?


Generating configuration file...
# Database type: MySQL
# Loading class: DatabaseMysql
# Attempting to connect to database server as ******...success.
# Connected to 5.0.18
# Database ******* exists
# There are already MediaWiki tables in this database. Checking if 
updates are needed...

...hitcounter table already exists.
...querycache table already exists.
...objectcache table already exists.
...categorylinks table already exists.
...logging table already exists.
...user_newtalk table already exists.
...transcache table already exists.
...trackbacks table already exists.
...externallinks table already exists.
...job table already exists.
...langlinks table already exists.
...querycache_info table already exists.
...filearchive table already exists.
...have ipb_id field in ipblocks table.
...have ipb_expiry field in ipblocks table.
...have rc_type field in recentchanges table.
...have rc_ip field in recentchanges table.
...have rc_id field in recentchanges table.
...have rc_patrolled field in recentchanges table.
...have user_real_name field in user table.
...have user_token field in user table.
...have user_email_token field in user table.
...have user_registration field in user table.
...have log_params field in logging table.
...have ar_rev_id field in archive table.
...have ar_text_id field in archive table.
...have page_len field in page table.
...have rev_deleted field in revision table.
...have img_width field in image table.
...have img_metadata field in image table.
...have img_media_type field in image table.
...have ss_total_pages field in site_stats table.
...have iw_trans field in interwiki table.
...have ipb_range_start field in ipblocks table.
...have ss_images field in site_stats table.
...already have interwiki table
...indexes seem up to 20031107 standards
Already have pagelinks; skipping old links table updates.
...image primary key already set.
The watchlist table is already set up for email notification.
Adding missing watchlist talk page rows... ok
...user table does not contain old email authentication field.


Warning:  mysql_field_flags(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL 
result resource in ~/html/cgi-bin/?*******/maintenance/updaters.inc on 
line 294

Fixing title encoding on logging table... Query "ALTER TABLE `logging`
  CHANGE COLUMN log_title
  log_title varchar(255) binary NOT NULL default ''
" failed with error code "MySQL server has gone away (******.upenn.edu)".