Normally you should be able to just copy the working libmysqlclient.so over next to your cod2_lnxded binary and then "include" it with LD_PRELOAD_PATH=. (IIRC, did this stuff years ago)

This one is from 2009, might still do it's job great on your Ubuntu 12.04: http://killtube.org/downloads/libcod/libmysqlclient.so (or take the one from your working distribution)

OR:

Rename the default one to /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libmysqlclient.so.18_backup and upload the working one from your working distribution (hacky hacky..)

The command "ldd cod2_lnxded" is pretty helpful to see which .so would be loaded.

Also try adding LD_DEBUG=libs for more debugging: http://www.bnikolic.co.uk/blog/linux-ld-debug.html


About the printf debug... I meant to add printf's in the libcod source code and recompiling it, but seems like we already know that it is the MySQL lib version, so no need for that anymore.