Do not file a bug report before you have found out as much as possible about what when wrong. See the instructions at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/bug-reports.

Make sure to include the output of mysql-test-run.pl, as well as contents of all .reject files in the mysql-test/r directory.

Check whether an individual test in the test suite also fails when run on its own:

shell> cd mysql-test
shell> ./mysql-test-run.pl test_name

If this fails, you should configure MySQL with --with-debug and run mysql-test-run.pl with the --debug option. If this also fails, send the trace file mysql-test/var/tmp/master.trace to ftp://ftp.mysql.com/pub/mysql/upload/ so that we can examine it. Please remember to also include a full description of your system, the version of the mysqld binary and how you compiled it.

Run mysql-test-run.pl with the --force option to see whether any other tests fail.

If you have compiled MySQL yourself, check the MySQL Reference Manual to see whether there are any platform-specific issues for your system. There might be configuration workarounds to deal with the problems that you observe. Also, consider using one of the binaries we have compiled for you at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/. All our standard binaries should pass the test suite!

If you get an error such as Result length mismatch or Result content mismatch it means that the output of the test was not an exact match for the expected output. This could be a bug in MySQL or it could be that your version of mysqld produces slightly different results under some circumstances.

The results file is located in the r directory and has a name with a .result extension. A failed test result is put in a file with the same basename as the result file and a .reject extension. If your test case is failing, you should use diff to compare the .result and .reject files. If you cannot see how they are different, examine both with od -c and also check their lengths.

If a test fails completely, you should check the logs file in the mysql-test/var/log directory for hints of what went wrong.

If you have compiled MySQL with debugging, you can try to debug test failures by running mysql-test-run.pl with either or both of the --gdb and --debug options.

If you have not compiled MySQL for debugging you should probably do so by specifying the --with-debug option when you invoke configure.