Table deleted from data directory

I had a table with a huge amount of test data. For some reason, I
started getting errors that said corrupt key file, try repairing the
table. I fired a "repair table blah" and waited for more than 8 hours
but the repairing never completed. As I was only working with test
data, I decided to drop that table and start anew. The "drop table
blah" was also taking forever. Then I finally decided to go inside
mysql data directory and did a "rm -rf blah.*". Now when I try to
create that table again, I get "ERROR 1105 (HY000): MyISAM table
'blah' is in use (most likely by a MERGE table). Try FLUSH TABLES.". I
tried "FLUSH TABLES" and I am waiting for more that 2 hours to let it
complete.

Is there any way to fix this problem _without_ restarting the server?

"vijay" <vijaykcm@gmail.com> wrote:
> I had a table with a huge amount of test data. For some reason, I
> started getting errors that said corrupt key file, try repairing the
> table. I fired a "repair table blah" and waited for more than 8 hours
> but the repairing never completed. As I was only working with test
> data, I decided to drop that table and start anew. The "drop table
> blah" was also taking forever. Then I finally decided to go inside
> mysql data directory and did a "rm -rf blah.*". Now when I try to
> create that table again, I get "ERROR 1105 (HY000): MyISAM table
> 'blah' is in use (most likely by a MERGE table). Try FLUSH TABLES.". I
> tried "FLUSH TABLES" and I am waiting for more that 2 hours to let it
> complete.
>
> Is there any way to fix this problem _without_ restarting the server?

No. In fact deleting in the datadir with mysqld still running was the
error. As long as you are *very* sure what you're doing, you must not
fiddle around with files in the datadir.

I don't think you will be able to cleanly shutdown mysqld anyway. You
can try kill -USR1 or even kill -KILL. But probably you will end up
with garbage in your tables.


XL
--
Axel Schwenke, Support Engineer, MySQL AB

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