I have two mysql servers, viewed from the same mysql client, right_server is rendering the french characters correctly, wrong_server is not. Encoding is the same :$ mysql -h right_server -NBe SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_%'$ mysql -h wrong_server -NBe SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_%'give same results :character_set_client     utf8character_set_connection utf8character_set_database   utf8character_set_filesystem binarycharacter_set_results    utf8character_set_server     utf8character_set_system     utf8I use mysqldump to check tables structures are the same :$ mysqldump -h right_server db MY_TABLE | grep MY_COL$ mysqldump -h wrong_server db MY_TABLE | grep MY_COLbut one of the comment is not rendered correctly :  `MY_COL` varchar(7) COLLATE utf8_bin COMMENT 'associ ',  `MY_COL` varchar(7) COLLATE utf8_bin COMMENT 'associ. .',(result with mysqldump --default-character-set=UTF8 --no-data is the same)In wrong_server characters seem correctly stored :[wrong_server]$ mysql -e 'show create table db.MY_TABLE\G'  `MY_COL` varchar(7) COLLATE utf8_bin COMMENT 'associ ',How to force mysqldump encoding ?Note: the only difference I see between servers ischaracter_sets_dir      /.../mysql.../share/charsets/in SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_%' of one server and no utf file defined in this directory.
Force mysqldump encoding
linux;mysql;character encoding