Error importing data while migrating Jira: "Incorrect string value"

[STM Systems]

I'm in the process of upgrading Jira from version 3.13.2 to 4.4.5. I've been following 'Migrating JIRA to Another Server' doc. While importing the XML backup into the test server I get the following exception:

Error importing data: org.apache.commons.lang.exception.NestableException: com.atlassian.jira.exception.DataAccessException: org.ofbiz.core.entity.GenericEntityException: while inserting:...

...(SQL Exception while executing the following:INSERT INTO jiraaction (ID, issueid, AUTHOR, actiontype, actionlevel, rolelevel, actionbody, CREATED, UPDATEAUTHOR, UPDATED, actionnum) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?) (Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBDHot...' for column 'actionbody' at row 1))

This breaks the database badly, and I have to empty it out to get Jira back to setup mode... Any ideas?

[Deleted user]

https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=211649893

.. this will be the explanation and cure for most people; your character encoding on the database and the encoding of the data in the import file do not match

[STM Systems]

It seems one of the posts contained a control character in the body. To resolve, I've sanitized the XML data like so prior to importig again:

sed -i 's/^C//g' $XMLBACKUP #^C to be typed as ctrl V and ctrl C