Comment to 'Problem with update from 11.0.1 to latest 12.1'
  • For the second point you need to fix this part in your server

    include_path='.: / usr / share / php '
    

    About your unicode collation trouble, you need to apply the query to transfer the all non-transferred tables  from utf8mb4_general_ci to 

    utf8mb4_unicode_ci and try to update modules again.