Mysqldump ignore some tables

mysqldump -u username -p database --ignore-table=database.table1 > database.sql

If you want to ignore multiple tables you can use a simple script like this

#!/bin/bash
PASSWORD=XXXXXX
HOST=XXXXXX
USER=XXXXXX
DATABASE=databasename
DB_FILE=dump.sql
EXCLUDED_TABLES=(
table1
table2
table3
table4
tableN   
)

IGNORED_TABLES_STRING=''
for TABLE in "${EXCLUDED_TABLES[@]}"
do :
   IGNORED_TABLES_STRING+=" --ignore-table=${DATABASE}.${TABLE}"
done

echo "Dump structure"
mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} --single-transaction --no-data ${DATABASE} > ${DB_FILE}

echo "Dump content"
mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} ${DATABASE} ${IGNORED_TABLES_STRING} >> ${DB_FILE}

Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/425158/skip-certain-tables-with-mysqldump