myisamchk on 40GB table

[Michael Weisman]

I am attempting to repair a VERY large table with 'myisamchk -f filename.MYI'

berfore doing this, a select count(*) indicated 50 million records.

I stopped the database and executed the myisamchk command.

it has been 20 hours now, and the task is still running.

here is the output from the command:

=========================================
myisamchk: error: Found wrong record at 554710524
MyISAM-table 'main.MYI' is corrupted
Fix it using switch "-r" or "-o"
[root@general master]# myisamchk -r main.MYI
- recovering (with keycache) MyISAM-table 'main.MYI'
Data records: 50345594
myisamchk: error: Can't create new tempfile: 'main.TMD'
MyISAM-table 'main.MYI' is not fixed because of errors
Try fixing it by using the --safe-recover (-o) or the --force (-f) option
[root@general master]# myisamchk -o main.MYI
- recovering (with keycache) MyISAM-table 'main.MYI'
Data records: 50345594
myisamchk: error: Can't create new tempfile: 'main.TMD'
MyISAM-table 'main.MYI' is not fixed because of errors
Try fixing it by using the --safe-recover (-o) or the --force (-f) option
[root@general master]# myisamchk -f main.MYI
Checking MyISAM file: main.MYI
Data records: 50345594 Deleted blocks: 23424
myisamchk: warning: Table is marked as crashed and last repair failed
- check file-size
myisamchk: warning: Datafile is almost full, 4294967260 of 4294967294 used
- check key delete-chain
myisamchk: error: record delete-link-chain corrupted
- recovering (with keycache) MyISAM-table 'main.MYI'
Data records: 50345594
Found wrong stored record at 554710524
303590000 <---------- THIS IS THE COUNT.
=================================================

It would seen that I have 50 million records, so what is being counted, and what does "Found wrong stored record at 554710524" mean ?

This is mysql-3.23, on RH Fedora, *) GB drive, 1GB RAM.

Thanks.
michael.