cache_form has been truncated. Permanent error MYSQL Incorrect key file when a form is accessed

Question

On a site I inherited, I can see cache_form is empty. It has been truncated some time ago. I have got an error crashing my site when accessing many type of forms: views exposed forms, forms to edit Views and node edit forms. The error is a MYSQL Incorrect key file error and is triggered by clear_cache_all(). There is an attempt to DELETE FROM cache_form, where a given form ID is found. However the table is empty so it does not work. I do not know why Drupal has to delete a cache entry from the table even for a new node. Is there a way to bypass the step where Drupal try to delete the cache entry?

Answer 1

This sounds like someone tried to do some optimization to {cache_form} through a MySQL interface and did something that makes it incompatible with Drupal, or the table is damaged due to a dull disk (see this happen before).

First make sure you have free disk space, and then do a CHECK TABLE cache_form; and see if there are any errors. If you see some, you can try the standard repair techniques, but it is often best to just re-create the table.

These steps are dangerous and can destroy your site. Make sure you have backups.

To re-create {cache_form} I would

Start a MySQL interface , and delete {cache_form}, eg DROP TABLE cache_form;

Recreate the table from a known good Drupal 7 install. I think this is the default:

CREATE TABLE `cache_form` (
  `cid` varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '' COMMENT 'Primary Key: Unique cache ID.',
  `data` longblob COMMENT 'A collection of data to cache.',
  `expire` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'A Unix timestamp indicating when the cache entry should expire, or 0 for never.',
  `created` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'A Unix timestamp indicating when the cache entry was created.',
  `serialized` smallint(6) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'A flag to indicate whether content is serialized (1) or not (0).',
  PRIMARY KEY (`cid`),
  KEY `expire` (`expire`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COMMENT='Cache table for the form system to store recently built...';