I use mysqldump to back up a database from a development environment and 
upload it to a production environment.

A couple of days ago I was surprised to see that I was getting errors as soon 
as I uploaded the backed up database to the production machine!  I repeated 
the backup (more in disbelief than anything else) but the error remained.

I spent a few minutes looking around and scratching my head as to what was 
amiss with it, until eventually I noticed that the recent backup was smaller 
than the previous version (it should have been bigger due to extra data that 
has accumulated in the database).  I had another final go in running the same 
good ol' mysqldump command and this time it worked.  The backup was a 
reasonable size and the upload restored the application in the production 
environment in a good working order.

Is there a right and a wrong way of backing up mysql?  Did I do something 
wrong?  How should one verify that a back up is sound?  (Imagine trying to 
restore from that incomplete backup!)
-- 
Regards,
Mick