[Techtalk] drush sql-sync fails with 'Drush command terminated abnormally due to an unrecoverable error'

[Carla Schroder]

Techtalkers, you're my last hope because drupal.org, as usual, is
populated by users with questions but not answers. I swear Drupal was
put on this Earth as a test for the faithful, and I can see I'm not
going to make it into the promised land.

Here's the deal: I have a nice well-functioning Drupal 6 sandbox set up
on Linux Mint 13. The site configs are under version control
(Subversion), and I sync the site files and DBs from our production
server with drush. 

I want a second sandbox on another PC, which also runs Linux Mint 13.
Same vhosts, Drush aliases, site structure, docroot, permissions-- as
far as I can tell it's all the same, though obviously something is
different because drush sql-sync fails with the asininely unhelpful
error message 'Drush command terminated abnormally due to an
unrecoverable error'. I have debugging on and verbosity turned way up
and that's all it says. As near as I can tell it is failing to connect
to the local DB and I'll be hornswoggled if I can figure out why.

Here is a snippet from a successful run on my working sandbox:


==================================


$ drush -dvvvvv sql-sync @remotesite @localsite --no-cache --sanitize
--no-ordered-dump 

[snip]

Calling system(mysql --database=stage_local --host=127.0.0.1
--user=root --password=password --silent < /tmp/stage_local.sql); Drush
bootstrap phase : _drush_bootstrap_drupal_root() [845.82 sec, 7.16 MB]
[bootstrap] Initialized Drupal 6.28 root directory at /var/www/stage
[845.82 sec, 8.21 MB] [notice] Drush bootstrap phase :
_drush_bootstrap_drupal_site() [845.82 sec, 8.22 MB] [bootstrap]
Initialized Drupal site sandbox.site.com at sites/sandbox.site.com
[845.82 sec, 8.22 MB] [notice] Drush bootstrap phase :
_drush_bootstrap_drupal_configuration() [845.82 sec, 8.22 MB]
[bootstrap] 
Undefined index: QUERY_STRING fast_404.inc:7 [845.82 sec,
8.32 MB] [notice] 
Undefined index: QUERY_STRING fast_404.inc:47 [845.82
sec, 8.32 MB] [notice] Drush bootstrap phase :
_drush_bootstrap_drupal_database() [845.83 sec, 8.34 MB] [bootstrap]
Successfully connected to the Drupal database. [845.83 sec, 8.35 MB]
[bootstrap] Drush bootstrap phase : _drush_bootstrap_drupal_full()
[845.83 sec, 8.98 MB] [bootstrap] Drush bootstrap phase :
_drush_bootstrap_drupal_login() [846.07 sec, 52.66 MB] [bootstrap]
Successfully logged into Drupal as Anonymous (uid=0) [846.07 sec, 52.66
MB] [bootstrap]

The following post-sync operations will be done on the destination:
* Reset passwords and email addresses in user table

Running: /usr/share/drush/drush.php --root='/var/www/stage'
--uri='http://sandbox.site.com' sql-query 'update users set pass =
[command] MD5('\''password'\''), mail = concat('\''user+'\'', uid,
'\''@localhost'\'') where uid > 0; ' --backend 2>&1 [846.07 sec, 52.67
MB] Command dispatch complete [960.29 sec, 52.61 MB] [notice] Timer Cum
(sec) Count Avg (msec) page 114.464 1 114463.6

Peak memory usage was 52.85 MB [960.29 sec, 52.61 MB]

===============================================

On the second sandbox it fails at connecting to the local DB:

=================================================

Calling system(mysql --database=stage_local --host=127.0.0.1
--user=root --password=password --silent < /tmp/stage_local.sql); Drush
bootstrap phase : _drush_bootstrap_drupal_root() [764.26 sec, 4.56 MB]
[bootstrap] 
Initialized Drupal 6.28 root directory at /var/www/stage
[764.27 sec, 5.5 MB] [notice] 
Drush bootstrap phase :
_drush_bootstrap_drupal_site() [764.27 sec, 5.51 MB] [bootstrap]
Initialized Drupal site sandbox.local.com at [notice]
sites/sandbox.local.com [764.27 sec, 5.51 MB]  [debug] 
Drush bootstrap phase :
_drush_bootstrap_drupal_configuration() [764.27 sec, 5.52 MB]
[bootstrap] 
Drush bootstrap phase : _drush_bootstrap_drupal_database()
[764.27 sec, 5.55 MB] [bootstrap] 
Successfully connected to the Drupal
database. [764.27 sec, 5.55 MB] [bootstrap] 
Drush bootstrap phase :
_drush_bootstrap_drupal_full() [764.32 sec, 5.76 MB] [bootstrap] 
Drush
command terminated abnormally due to an unrecoverable error. [767.26
sec, 42.09 MB] [error]

[prints a random site HTML page and exits]

=======================================================


Mysql logs show nothing, and there are no drush logs. Help help help!

thanks,
Carla