During work on https://bugs.launchpad.net/trove/+bug/1363177 it was determined that the root problem is that the Mysql datadir should not be located on the root of a mounted filesystem.
I discussed with George Lorch from Percona who pointed me to this document:
http://www.percona.com/files/white-papers/preventing-mysql-emergencies.pdf
One of the recommendations contained in this document is found in section 11.3:
"Servers whose data directory is located in the root directory of a mounted filesystem can encounter problems. First, the presence of a directory named lost+found can cause many tools to malfunction, belieiving it to be a database because it appears in the output of SHOW DATABASES....."
There are other issues enumerated in that article related to this.
The recommendation would be to put the mysql datadir in a directory under the mount point. Also, there is no reason it has to be on /var/lib. We could probably change it to /data as the mount point and have a "mysql" sub-directory under that. (i.e. datadir = /data/mysql)
This may be useful as a workaround, but the best practice still is to not use the root of a mount.
http:// www.chriscalend er.com/ ignoring- the-lostfound- directory- in-your- datadir/