I had a similar problem recently which I'm planning to share, and I went through similar headaches as you. I came to the same conclusion that I need to "dump and reimport" the entire database to get back the free space, so I don't think there's a better way around it.
Just an bonus note, if you have a Master/Slave setup and your database is creating bin logs (which are huge as well), you can symlink the entire binlog directory without a problem.
Thanks for sharing!
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Great step-by-step article!
I had a similar problem recently which I'm planning to share, and I went through similar headaches as you. I came to the same conclusion that I need to "dump and reimport" the entire database to get back the free space, so I don't think there's a better way around it.
Just an bonus note, if you have a Master/Slave setup and your database is creating bin logs (which are huge as well), you can symlink the entire binlog directory without a problem.
Thanks for sharing!