database table corrrupt - how?

tonyw

hi folks,

woke up to find my site not working because a table file was corrupt and couldnt be opened. So i rang the host who said it was all my fault! Their first idea was that the table had been corrupted through bad scripting on my behalf - i doubt thats possible but anyway, this is a very simple site!

After a few more lame excuses they finaly claim the following -

"It may, under certain circumstances, be possible for minor corruption of an individual record to occur if, for example, a visitor to your site lost their connection suddenly (due to, for example, someone pulling out their network cable) at the beginning of a write."

So someones modem drops its connection and a database then gets corrupted at the host?

I dont think so - but i thought i'd share this with you all 🙂

Sxooter

Most corruption is caused by either bad memory or bad hard drive sectors.

Switch hosting companies to one that's willing to test its hardware when things like this happen.
You get what you pay for.

csn

Good Lord - that tech person needs a luart applied...

Sxooter

Try this, download something like the linux kernel and compile it on that box a few dozen times. If you get random sig-11s then there's bad memory, period. Then tell them to download memtest86 and test their boxes.

tonyw

Originally posted by Sxooter
Try this, download something like the linux kernel and compile it on that box a few dozen times. If you get random sig-11s then there's bad memory, period. Then tell them to download memtest86 and test their boxes.

good idea! I'm certainly nervous waiting for something to fail again. I suppose the good thing about shared hosting is that it wont just be us thats affected.

Unfortunately, they wont answer my emails anymore on this matter :rolleyes:

Sxooter

Please note that in my recommendation to compile the kernel, there's no need to actually run that kernel, you're just looking for sig 11s in the compile process. If the compiler is sig11ing then you usually have flaky hardware.

Another good way of using up tons o ram is compiling the postgresql database.

tonyw

Another good way of using up tons o ram is compiling the postgresql database.

to be honest i dont think i have any access over ftp

I was thinking of writing a php script to write and delete a file repeatedly...

Sxooter

Just write a dirt simple script to exec() whatever you give it. :-)

HalfaBee

I bet they are running the latest version of mysql 4.???.
This seems to crash quite often under heavy loads (queries per sec > 60).

Try this query to fix the table.

REPAIR TABLE tablename

HalfaBee