When mysqldump –no-set-names matters

I had this perplexing problem yesterday where a mysql dump and restore was producing different results when using MaatKit mk-table-checksum.

mk-table-checksum --algorithm=BIT_XOR h=192.168.X.XX,u=user,p=password --databases=db1 --tables=c
DATABASE TABLE   CHUNK HOST         ENGINE      COUNT         CHECKSUM TIME WAIT STAT  LAG
db1      c           0 192.168.X.XX InnoDB     215169         d1d52a31    2    0 NULL NULL
mk-table-checksum --algorithm=BIT_XOR h=localhost,u=user,p=password --databases=db1 --tables=c
DATABASE TABLE   CHUNK HOST      ENGINE      COUNT         CHECKSUM TIME WAIT STAT  LAG
db1      c           0 localhost InnoDB     215169         91e7f182    0    0 NULL NULL

It was rather crazy until I reviewed the mysqldump settings I was using, and I realized I was using –no-set-names.

So just what does this option remove. Here is a diff of mysqldump with and without.

5a6,10
>
> /*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@@CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
> /*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@@CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
> /*!40101 SET @OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION=@@COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
> /*!40101 SET NAMES utf8 */;
153a159,161
> /*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
> /*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
> /*!40101 SET COLLATION_CONNECTION=@OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
156c164

As you can see it executes a SET NAMES utf8. The problem here is I’m exporting a table, and it is DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1, and no columns are defined as utf8.

I’m not expert in character sets, but this strikes me as strange, and a problem that remains unresolved to my satisfaction, resolved, but not to my comfort level.

Tagged with: Databases MySQL

Related Posts

Improving container security in your CI/CD pipeline

At PyCon AU 2026 , the presentation Your Python container is 90% stuff you didn’t ask for by Scott Norris at Chainguard really exposed the impact of being lazy in container management for security purposes.

Read more

My take on PyCon Australia 2026

PyCon AU 2026 held in Brisbane this week was a five day event for the Python community. With specialized tracks and dedicated tutorial and engineering days there was a wide variety of content available.

Read more

Fixing Old Software Bugs Without Thinking

I previously came across an issue in my benchmarking work where I relied on the Latency Histogram section of sysbench output. On Linux it worked fine — I generally ran my workload there, so it never mattered.

Read more