Is this an issue with the fact now() is being in a query, which common sense tells me would cause issues if the inserts on that table were frequent enough??!?!

Yes, I believe this is the cause of your errors. Your method for introducing the new slave seems to be correct. It is quite strange in my opinion to define a table with a DATETIME field as the Primary Key. As you've quite rightly pointed out, the slave gets the replicated queries from the master and they will use the now() keyword in the queries, which will grab the timestamp from the local server.

Really, the table should be defined with some other data type for the PK (such as INT or BIGINT) which can be guaranteed to be unique, unlike a timestamp inserted with now().

Yes, it will overwrite the data on the Slave. However, you can setup replication to pick up from the point-in-time of the dump and make it roll all changes since the dump was loaded on the Slave

For this Example, let's assume

• IP of the Master is 10.1.1.20
• IP of the Slave is 10.1.1.30

Here is what you do

STEP01 : Activate Binary Logging on the Old Server

Step01-a) Add this to /etc/my.cnf on the Master

[mysqld]
server-id=101120
log-bin=mysql-bin

Step01-b) # service mysql restart

After STEP01, you should see mysql-bin.000001 and mysql-bin.index in /var/lib/mysql

STEP02 : Perform mysqldump

On the Master, you can mysqldump the data and record from what point in time it happened.

# service mysql restart --skip-networking --skip-grants
# mysqldump --single-transaction --master-data=2 --all-databases --routines --triggers > MySQLData.sql
# service mysql restart

What this does is record the Master Log File and Position the moment the mysqldump started as a comment. You can visibly see it when you view line 22:

# head -22 MySQLData.sql | tail -1

STEP03 : Load the mysqldump into the Slave

Execute the mysql client loading the mysqldump into the Slave's mysql instance

# mysql -h10.1.1.30 -uroot -p < MySQLData.sql

STEP04 : Create MySQL Replication User on the Master

# mysql -uroot -p -e"GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE, REPLICATION CLIENT ON *.* TO 'replicator'@'10.64.51.%' IDENTIFIED BY 'replpassword'"

STEP05 : Setup the Slave with a Separate Server ID

Add this to /etc/my.cnf on the Slave

[mysqld]
server-id=101130

and # service mysql restart

STEP06 : Setup the Replication on the Slave

Goto the mysql client and run the following command

mysql> CHANGE MASTER TO
    MASTER_HOST='10.1.1.20',
    MASTER_PORT=3306,
    MASTER_USER='replicator',
    MASTER_PASSWORD='replpassword',
    MASTER_LOG_FILE='mysql-bin.000001',
    MASTER_LOG_POS=1;

STEP07 : Setup the point-in-time Master Log and Position

Back in STEP02, I mentioned viewing the point-in-time position using

# head -22 MySQLData.sql | tail -1

You should see something like this:

#CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_LOG_FILE='mysql-bin.000015', MASTER_LOG_POS=122957100;

Run it as command in the mysql client on the Slave

mysql> CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_LOG_FILE='mysql-bin.000015', MASTER_LOG_POS=122957100;

Afterwards, run this command

mysql> SHOW SLAVE STATUS\G

You should see something like this:

*************************** 1. row ***************************
               Slave_IO_State: Waiting for master to send event
                  Master_Host: 10.64.113.232
                  Master_User: replicant
                  Master_Port: 3306
                Connect_Retry: 60
              Master_Log_File: mysql-bin.000015
          Read_Master_Log_Pos: 122957100
               Relay_Log_File: relay-bin.003666
                Relay_Log_Pos: 122957100
        Relay_Master_Log_File: mysql-bin.000015
             Slave_IO_Running: No
            Slave_SQL_Running: No
              Replicate_Do_DB:
          Replicate_Ignore_DB:
           Replicate_Do_Table:
       Replicate_Ignore_Table:
      Replicate_Wild_Do_Table:
  Replicate_Wild_Ignore_Table:
                   Last_Errno: 0
                   Last_Error:
                 Skip_Counter: 0
          Exec_Master_Log_Pos: 106
              Relay_Log_Space: 106
              Until_Condition: None
               Until_Log_File:
                Until_Log_Pos: 0
           Master_SSL_Allowed: No
           Master_SSL_CA_File:
           Master_SSL_CA_Path:
              Master_SSL_Cert:
            Master_SSL_Cipher:
               Master_SSL_Key:
        Seconds_Behind_Master: 0
Master_SSL_Verify_Server_Cert: No
                Last_IO_Errno: 0
                Last_IO_Error:
               Last_SQL_Errno: 0
               Last_SQL_Error:
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

STEP08 : Launch Replication

Start up replication with this:

mysql> START SLAVE;

Afterwards, run this command again

mysql> SHOW SLAVE STATUS\G

If you see this

             Slave_IO_Running: Yes
            Slave_SQL_Running: Yes

CONGRATULATIONS, MySQL Replication is Working !!!