CHECK TABLE
Syntax
CHECK TABLE
checks a table or tables for errors. CHECK TABLE
works for InnoDB
, MyISAM
, ARCHIVE
, and CSV
tables. For MyISAM
tables, the key statistics are updated as well.
To check a table, you must have some privilege for it.
CHECK TABLE
can also check views for problems, such as tables that are referenced in the view definition that no longer exist.
CHECK TABLE
is supported for partitioned tables, and you can use ALTER TABLE ... CHECK PARTITION
to check one or more partitions; for more information, see , "ALTER TABLE
Syntax", and , "Maintenance of Partitions".
CHECK TABLE
returns a result set with the following columns.
Column | Value |
---|---|
Table
| The table name |
Op
| Always check
|
Msg_type
| status , error , info , note , or warning
|
Msg_text
| An informational message |
Note that the statement might produce many rows of information for each checked table. The last row has a Msg_type
value of status
and the Msg_text
normally should be OK
. If you don't get OK
, or Table is already up to date
you should normally run a repair of the table. See , "MyISAM
Table Maintenance and Crash Recovery". Table is already up to date
means that the storage engine for the table indicated that there was no need to check the table.
The FOR UPGRADE
option checks whether the named tables are compatible with the current version of MySQL. With FOR UPGRADE
, the server checks each table to determine whether there have been any incompatible changes in any of the table's data types or indexes since the table was created. If not, the check succeeds. Otherwise, if there is a possible incompatibility, the server runs a full check on the table (which might take some time). If the full check succeeds, the server marks the table's .frm
file with the current MariaDB version number. Marking the .frm
file ensures that further checks for the table with the same version of the server will be fast.
Incompatibilities might occur because the storage format for a data type has changed or because its sort order has changed. Our aim is to avoid these changes, but occasionally they are necessary to correct problems that would be worse than an incompatibility between releases.
Currently, FOR UPGRADE
discovers these incompatibilities:
- The indexing order for end-space in
TEXT
columns forInnoDB
andMyISAM
tables changed between MariaDB and 5.0. - The storage method of the new
DECIMAL
data type changed between MariaDB 5.0.3 and 5.0.5. - If your table was created by a different version of the MariaDB server than the one you are currently running,
FOR UPGRADE
indicates that the table has an.frm
file with an incompatible version. In this case, the result set returned byCHECK TABLE
contains a line with aMsg_type
value oferror
and aMsg_text
value ofTable upgrade required. Please do 'REPAIR TABLE `
tbl_name
`' to fix it! - Changes are sometimes made to character sets or collations that require table indexes to be rebuilt. For details about these changes and when
FOR UPGRADE
detects them, see , "Checking Whether Tables or Indexes Must Be Rebuilt".
The other check options that can be given are shown in the following table. These options are passed to the storage engine, which may use them or not. MyISAM
uses them; they are ignored for InnoDB
tables and views.
Type | Meaning |
---|---|
QUICK
| Do not scan the rows to check for incorrect links. |
FAST
| Check only tables that have not been closed properly. |
CHANGED
| Check only tables that have been changed since the last check or that have not been closed properly. |
MEDIUM
| Scan rows to verify that deleted links are valid. This also calculates a key checksum for the rows and verifies this with a calculated checksum for the keys. |
EXTENDED
| Do a full key lookup for all keys for each row. This ensures that the table is 100% consistent, but takes a long time. |
If none of the options QUICK
, MEDIUM
, or EXTENDED
are specified, the default check type for dynamic-format MyISAM
tables is MEDIUM
. This has the same result as running myisamchk --medium-check tbl_name
on the table. The default check type also is MEDIUM
for static-format MyISAM
tables, unless CHANGED
or FAST
is specified. In that case, the default is QUICK
. The row scan is skipped for CHANGED
and FAST
because the rows are very seldom corrupted.
You can combine check options, as in the following example that does a quick check on the table to determine whether it was closed properly:
CHECK TABLE test_table FAST QUICK;Note
In some cases, CHECK TABLE
changes the table. This happens if the table is marked as "corrupted" or "not closed properly" but CHECK TABLE
does not find any problems in the table. In this case, CHECK TABLE
marks the table as okay.
If a table is corrupted, it is most likely that the problem is in the indexes and not in the data part. All of the preceding check types check the indexes thoroughly and should thus find most errors.
If you just want to check a table that you assume is okay, you should use no check options or the QUICK
option. The latter should be used when you are in a hurry and can take the very small risk that QUICK
does not find an error in the data file. (In most cases, under normal usage, MariaDB should find any error in the data file. If this happens, the table is marked as "corrupted" and cannot be used until it is repaired.)
FAST
and CHANGED
are mostly intended to be used from a script (for example, to be executed from cron) if you want to check tables from time to time. In most cases, FAST
is to be preferred over CHANGED
. (The only case when it is not preferred is when you suspect that you have found a bug in the MyISAM
code.)
EXTENDED
is to be used only after you have run a normal check but still get strange errors from a table when MariaDB tries to update a row or find a row by key. This is very unlikely if a normal check has succeeded.
Use of CHECK TABLE ... EXTENDED
might influence the execution plan generated by the query optimizer.
Some problems reported by CHECK TABLE
cannot be corrected automatically:
Found row where the auto_increment column has the value 0
.This means that you have a row in the table where the
AUTO_INCREMENT
index column contains the value 0. (It is possible to create a row where theAUTO_INCREMENT
column is 0 by explicitly setting the column to 0 with anUPDATE
statement.)This is not an error in itself, but could cause trouble if you decide to dump the table and restore it or do an
ALTER TABLE
on the table. In this case, theAUTO_INCREMENT
column changes value according to the rules ofAUTO_INCREMENT
columns, which could cause problems such as a duplicate-key error.To get rid of the warning, simply execute an
UPDATE
statement to set the column to some value other than 0.- If
CHECK TABLE
finds a problem for anInnoDB
table, the server shuts down to prevent error propagation. Details of the error will be written to the error log.