How to repair a serialized string which has been corrupted by an incorrect byte count length?

Question

I am using Hotaru CMS with the Image Upload plugin, I get this error if I try to attach an image to a post, otherwise there is no error:

unserialize()

Answer 1

In my case I was storing serialized data in BLOB field of MySQL DB which apparently wasn't big enough to contain the whole value and truncated it. Such a string obviously could not be unserialized.
Once converted that field to MEDIUMBLOB the problem dissipated. Also it may be needed to switch in table options ROW_FORMAT to DYNAMIC or COMPRESSED.