Database error when using CiviCRM admin UI: "Row size too large"

Question

I'm helping on a site that is on a different server than usual and see this error regularly in the back end when trying to complete various tasks (e.g. clear caches, run database updates, etc.)

[debug_info] => TRUNCATE TABLE civicrm_menu [nativecode=1118 ** Row size too large (> 8126). Changing some columns to TEXT or BLOB or using ROW_FORMAT=DYNAMIC or ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED may help. In current row format, BLOB prefix of 768 bytes is stored inline.]

The site is mostly working, but as mentioned many tasks error out and the above shows in the debug log. What could cause this?

Answer 1

Also see https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/a/31644/225 where the suggested fix is:

 ALTER TABLE civicrm_menu ROW_FORMAT=DYNAMIC 

Then rebuild the menus

Answer 2

Suggestions from various folks on chat include the following settings in my.cnf:

• innodb_log_file_size (may be too small by default)
• innodb_large_prefix=true
• innodb_file_format=barracuda

I changed those and was still having issues. This setting fixed it for me (and may be due to the site running on MariaDB?).

• innodb_strict_mode=0