diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml
index 2e0380a685..e11d2a6f60 100644
--- a/.travis.yml
+++ b/.travis.yml
@@ -17,13 +17,14 @@ env:
 before_install: 
 
     # - psql -U postgres -c "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE evennia TO evennia;"
+  - psql --version
   - psql -U postgres -c "CREATE DATABASE evennia;"
   - psql -U postgres -c "CREATE USER evennia WITH PASSWORD 'password';"
   - psql -U postgres -c "ALTER USER evennia CREATEDB;"
+  - mysql -- version
   - mysql -u root -e "CREATE DATABASE evennia CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;"
   - mysql -u root -e "CREATE USER 'evennia'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';"
   - mysql -u root -e "GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'evennia'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';"
-  - mysql -u root -e "SHOW VARIABLES WHERE Variable_name LIKE 'character\_set\_%' OR Variable_name LIKE 'collation%';"
 
 install:
   - pip install psycopg2-binary
@@ -37,8 +38,6 @@ before_script:
   - cd testing_mygame
   - evennia migrate
   - evennia collectstatic --noinput
-  - mysql -u root -e "SHOW TABLE STATUS;" evennia
-  - mysql -u root -e "SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM accounts_accountdb;" evennia
 
 script:
   - coverage run --source=../evennia --omit=*/migrations/*,*/urls.py,*/test*.py,*.sh,*.txt,*.md,*.pyc,*.service ../bin/unix/evennia test --settings=settings --keepdb evennia