Ok...
I added a named semaphore and created it in eqlaunch before anything else.
Then I use it to access the pet inventory in the functions in zonedb.cpp.
It seems to me this is:
1) a bigger issue - since the zone I am leaving doesn't other work in Save() before the zone I land in starts accessing it..
or
2) Somehow another mechanism was meant to handle this and isn't for pet inventory.
I can show, so far, that without my fix, the zone I land in can read the content of the character_pet_inventory table before the zone I am leaving has it completely updated... thus the problem.
This is all on my Linux server.
I can post the named semaphore fix, but I'm not happy with it and I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable with how the old zone and new zone get ordered might step in and slap me up some