Mysql 1050 Error “Table already exists” when in fa

Question

I'm adding this table:

CREATE TABLE contenttype (
        contenttypeid INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
        class VARBINARY(50) NOT NULL,
        packageid INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
        canplace ENUM('0','1') NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
        cansearch ENUM('0','1') NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
        cantag ENUM('0','1') DEFAULT '0',
        canattach ENUM('0','1') DEFAULT '0',
        isaggregator ENUM('0', '1') NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
        PRIMARY KEY (contenttypeid),
        UNIQUE KEY packageclass (packageid, class)
);

And I get a 1050 "table already exists"

But the table does NOT exist. Any ideas?

EDIT: more details because everyone seems to not believe me :)

DESCRIBE contenttype

yields:

1146 - Table 'gunzfact_vbforumdb.contenttype' doesn't exist

and

CREATE TABLE gunzfact_vbforumdb.contenttype(
contenttypeid INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
class VARBINARY( 50 ) NOT NULL ,
packageid INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL ,
canplace ENUM( '0', '1' ) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
cansearch ENUM( '0', '1' ) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
cantag ENUM( '0', '1' ) DEFAULT '0',
canattach ENUM( '0', '1' ) DEFAULT '0',
isaggregator ENUM( '0', '1' ) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
PRIMARY KEY ( contenttypeid ) ,

Yields:

1050 - Table 'contenttype' already exists

Answer 1

For me the problem was caused when using a filesystem copy of the mysql database directory instead of mysqldump. I have some very large tables, mostly MyISAM and a few InnoDB cache tables and it is not practical to mysqldump the data. Since we are still running MyISAM, XtraBackup is not an option.

The same symptoms as above happened to me. The table is not there, there are no files in the directory that pertain to the table, yet it cannot be created because MySQL thinks its there. Drop table says it's not there, create table says it is.

The problem occurred on two machines, both were fixed by copying backups. However, I noticed that in my backup that there was a .MYD and .MYI file, even though I was under the impression that these files are not used for InnoDB. The .MYD and .MYI files had an owner of root, while the .frm was owned by mysql.

If you copy from backup, check the file permissions. Flush tables might work, but I opted to shut down and restart the database.

Good luck.

Answer 2

I've been fighting with this all day: I have a Perl script that builds a set of tables by first doing a DROP IF EXISTS ... on them and then CREATEing them. The DROP succeeded, but on CREATE I got this error message: table already exists

I finally got to the bottom of it: The new version of MySQL that I'm using has a default engine of InnoDB ("show engine \G;") I changed it in the my.cnf file to default to MyISAM, re-started MySQL, and now I no longer get the "table already exists" error.

Answer 3

I was having huge issues with Error 1050 and 150.

The problem, for me was that I was trying to add a constraint with ON DELETE SET NULL as one of the conditions.

Changing to ON DELETE NO ACTION allowed me to add the required FK constraints.

Unfortunately the MySql error messages are utterly unhelpful so I had to find this solution iteratively and with the help of the answers to the question above.

Answer 4

I had this problem on Win7 in Sql Maestro for MySql 12.3. Enormously irritating, a show stopper in fact. Nothing helped, not even dropping and recreating the database. I have this same setup on XP and it works there, so after reading your answers about permissions I realized that it must be Win7 permissions related. So I ran MySql as administrator and even though Sql Maestro was run normally, the error disappeared. So it must have been a permissions issue between Win7 and MySql.

Answer 5

I also encountered this problem where trying to Create a table said it already exists and Dropping the table said it didn't exist.

I did "FLUSH TABLES" and it cleared the problem.

Answer 6

I got this same error, and REPAIR TABLE (from @NullUserException's answer) didn't help.

I eventually found this solution:

sudo mysqladmin flush-tables

For me, without the sudo, I got the following error:

mysqladmin: refresh failed; error: 'Access denied; you need the RELOAD privilege for this operation'

(Running on OS X 10.6)