Unable to continue upgrading an old cacti 0.8.8 to the latest version 1.2.18

Upgrading an old instance of cacti monitoring software may become a challenge, because of multiple new recommendations and requirements for the latest version 1.2.x.
There are a couple of b recommendations like memory limit and maximum execution time and multiple plugin requirements, which if not fulfilled the setup cannot continue. Second, there are the MySQL recommendations and there is an option innodb_file_format, which in general, is recommended to be Barracuda, but by default, in older version of MySQL use Antelope!

Upgrading from CACTI version 0.8.8 is successful to CACTI version 1.2.3, but then the upgrade process just began restarting and failed to upgrade to the final target CACTI version 1.2.18 because of the old MySQL InnoDB table format – Antelope.

Despite the Barracuda is just recommended and the upgrade process continues through the steps of the setup wizard, it just suddenly stops and returns to the welcome install screen.
Setting the option innodb_file_format resolves the problem and the upgrade setup finishes successfully the upgrade from CACTI version 0.8.8 (apparently with an intermediate upgrade to CACTI version 1.2.3) to CACTI version 1.2.18.

innodb_file_format=barracuda

Probably, this option will be a mandatory MySQL option for upgrading to a newer CACTI version after 1.2.3.

Several screenshots of recommendations and requirements for upgrading to CACTI 1.2.28

Keep on reading!