A client has had trouble with a server. We've restored the filesystem and most things seem to be working fine. The MySQL databases were restored from a copy of the /var/lib/mysql directory.
There are a couple of dozen databases on this server. In some of these databases, the tables all exhibit some strange behaviour. Running 'show tables' displays all of the table names. But trying to do anything with those tables (even 'desc table') gives a 'table does not exist' error.
A bit of Googling led me to this discussion of the exact problem.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7759170/mysql-table-doesnt-exist-but-it-does-or-it-should
There's an answer there about missing ibdata files. And sure enough, those files aren't present. The client is unclear (read "embarrassed", I think) but I suspect they were removed at some point as they took up too much space.
The client will get an education in the wisdom of not removing random files from the server. But is there anything than can be done to restore the data? Can it be pulled from the other database files?
As I said, I have the /var/lib/mysql files. I don't have SQL dumps.
This server runs a fully updated version of Centos 6.3. So I think that's mysql 5.1.
Any advice appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave...