Maybe, the manual should contain some more information about upgrading from 1.8 to 1.8.1
For me, it was not clear whether to run the dbpatches or not. At a first glance, I thought that the 1.8.1 patch was the same like the one for 1.8. But there are some differences (table node_checksum and some help messages).
Since the 1.8.1 dbpatch fails
if you did an upgrade from 1.6 to 1.8 before, it may be necessary to "extract" the differences between 1.8 dbpatch and 1.8.1 dbpatch and apply them manually.
For me, it was not clear whether to run the dbpatches or not. At a first glance, I thought that the 1.8.1 patch was the same like the one for 1.8. But there are some differences (table node_checksum and some help messages).
Since the 1.8.1 dbpatch fails
Code:
ERROR 1061 (42000) at line 1: Duplicate key name 'actions_1'