Simon J Mudd added a comment - 2014-11-13 20:35 There are 2 issues: (1) a column size problem (2) a don't write to binlogs while loading the data problem. The column size problem's fixed in 5.6.15: [smudd@myhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep MySQL-server MySQL-server-5.6.15-1.el6.x86_64 [smudd@myhost ~]$ sudo su - [root@myhost ~]# mysql mysql < /usr/share/mysql/fill_help_tables.sql [root@myhost ~]# What's not fixed in 5.6.15 but later is the "don't write to binlogs". That may have an issue of pushing down help files to downstream slaves which are not at the same version as the master, and this may break replication but may also leave invalid help information on the downstream server(s). Don't confuse the two issues which are mentioned here. However, if you're going to fix one problem fix them both.

Sergei Golubchik added a comment - 2014-11-13 20:53 already done both. Strangely enough, the column size problem was said to be fixed in 5.5.36 (see the bug report) and we, of course, have the fix both in 5.5 and in 10.0 ever since. But that fix only fixed tables as they were created, mysql_fix_privilege_tables was not changed, so upgrades were not covered by the fix. There was a second fix, for mysql_fix_privilege_tables, but only in 5.6. I won't even try to understand the reasoning behind that.