Mac OS X,  Ubuntu,  Unix,  WordPress

Resolve InnoDB Errors In MySQL

Database won’t start? InnoDB errors are a pain. Where was krypted for a month? Did everything finally get to me and I gave up blogging? No, the site ended up having some problems with corruption in some rows of the InnoDB tables. But, I was able to get the site back up by putting the database into recovery mode. How did I do this? It’s pretty straight forward. Open my.cnf and paste these lines in there:

innodb_force_recovery=3
innodb_purge_threads=0

Once the corruption is resolved, bring up empty databases and import your mysqldump into the new databases and link your site back up. But, the InnoDB force recovery puts the database into recovery mode, which is read only. So I wasn’t actually able to use the site, just look at it. At least the content was available, right? When MySQL isn’t writeable, you can’t log in as an admin, etc. The rest is one of the bigger pains I’ve encountered that didn’t result in an all nighter at a customer. I’ll write that up when I have time some day. In the meantime, next time someone changes my root password and breaks my backup scripts so I can’t just bring in a mysqldump, I’m breaking their arms. You’ve been warned.