I just noticed that the Sakai Install Docs are missing a small piece of info that may cause some headaches for those using MySQL and store their content in the database rather than on the filesystem.
If you don’t change the MySQL configuration parameter ‘max_allowed_packet’ from its default of 1Mb, you won’t be able to store anything in the database larger than 1Mb. This can be set in your my.cnf file. You can view your current setting by executing ‘show variables;’ from the MySQL console and looking for the parameter max_allowed_packet. It’s default is 1048576 (which is 1Mb in bytes).
It’s probably obvious, but am posting on my blog in case others experience the problem. I normally store content on disk, but just ran into this issue on a default MySQL setup and an out of the box Sakai install. Simple fix but easily overlooked. Whilst the sakai.properties have the settings content.upload.max and various others, nothing is mentioned about the underlying database.
Hope it helps someone.
steveswinsburg 