Rebuilding or Repairing MyISAM Tables or Indexes on a MySQL database

MySQL is a RDBMS (relationial database(DB) management system) that is available as an open-source software for all platforms. As a database tool, MySQL is well set up to handle tables. These tables allow users to store information in a clean, organized format. The type of data in question differs between columns. For larger tables, MySQL also has an index system, which allows simpler look-up of columns. The following guide will tell you how to rebuild or repair tables or indexes.

Getting Started

To complete this guide, you will need the following:
• 1 Node (Cloud Server or Dedicated Server) with a MySQL database

Tutorial

For rebuilding or repairing, you will need to follow these steps.

In order to rebuild a MySQL table, you must first dump and reload it. This can be done using “mysqldump” to create a dump file. Once the dump file is created, you can then use and “mysql” to reload the database:

mysqldump db_name table_name > dump.sql
mysql db_name < dump.sql

If you would like to rebuild all tables into a single DB, this can be done by specifying the database name only, without any table specified. In this case, you can use "mysqldump" to create a dump file, similar to the previous step, and then use "mysql" to reload the DB :

mysqldump db_name > dump.sql
mysql db_name < dump.sql

If, instead, you would like to rebuild all database tables into all the databases, then you can still use "mysqldump", but now with the "--all-databases" option. This will put the tables into all databases, instead of into a single database:

mysqldump --all-databases > dump.sql
mysql < dump.sql

You can also repair all tables in a specific database. For this, you can use "mysqlcheck" :

mysqlcheck --repair --databases db_name

Like the previous section, you can do this in all databases as well. To repair all tables into all databases, use "mysqlcheck" in the following way:

mysqlcheck --repair --all-databases

Conclusion

If you follow these steps, then the database tables you wanted to rebuild or repair should be working as desired. Depending on your goals, check to see if everything is working as planned, and if not, make sure you followed the corresponding step. If this guide was helpful to you, kindly share it with others who may also be interested.