mysqldump returning ts_chain returning error "Error 1412: Table definition has changed"

[Nick Brennan]

Hi,

We have an issue where we're taking backups using mysqldump, and getting a ts_chain error:

mysqldump: Error 1412: Table definition has changed, please retry transaction when dumping table `ts_chain` at row: 0

We're running a relatively small (50GB) DB hosting dynamic web content, which runs in-memory using a large buffer. The problem we have is that the page DML is being updated constantly while the dump is taking place.

We're tried adding the --quick option to the dump but this does not help - our dump string is:

mysqldump --single-transaction --flush-logs --master-data=2 --create-options -B --default-character-set=utf8 --routines --quick --max_allowed_packet=33554432 -u root --socket=/tmp/mysql.sock 'test'

Ts_chain appears to be an internal function called by mysqldump to extract a full list of tables to be dumped in sequence rather than an individual table, although I've been able to find little information about it.

We've seen the posts regarding repairing the tables, however our issue seems to be as the error states, ie that the table is changing structure during the time the dump is running.

Is there any additional parameter we can use that will prevent the dump from erroring, or allow us to get a full clean dump?

TIA
Nick