MySQL: Why does basic MySQLdump on db table fail with "Permission denied"

Generally I stick with defining the hostname anyways, but as you being root doesn't seem like it would be the problem, I would question where are you writing this to? What happens when you dump to > ~/myTestDumpedTable.sql

The answer came from a helpful person on the MySQL list:
As you guys (Anson and krazybean) were thinking - I did not have permission to be writing to the /usr/local/mysql/bin/ dir. But starting from any other directory, calls to mysqldump were failing because my shell PATH var (if I said that right) is not yet set up to handle mysqldump from another dir. Also, for some reason I do not really understand yet, I also needed to use a full path on the output, even if I was calling mysqldump effectively, and even if I had permission to write to the output dir (e.g. ~/myTestDumpedTable.sql. So here was my ticket, for now (quick answer):

Govind% /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqldump -uroot -p myDBname myTableName > /Users/Govind/myTestDumpedTable.sql

You can write to wherever your shell user has permission to do so. I just chose my user's home dir.

Hope this helps someone someday.
Cheers.