MySQL table is marked as crashed and last (automatic?) repair failed

Question

If your MySQL process is running, stop it. On Debian:

sudo service mysql stop

Go to your data folder. On Debian:

cd /var/lib/mysql/$DATABASE_NAME

Try running:

myisamchk -r $TABLE_NAME

If that doesn't work, you can try:

myisamchk -r -v -f $TABLE_NAME

You can start your MySQL server again. On Debian:

sudo service mysql start

Try running the following query:

repair table <table_name>;

I had the same issue and it solved me the problem.

If it gives you permission denial while moving to /var/lib/mysql then use the following solution

$ cd /var/lib/
$ sudo -u mysql myisamchk -r -v -f mysql/<DB_NAME>/<TABLE_NAME>

This was my experience resolving this issue. I'm using XAMPP. I was getting the error below

 Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table '.\mysql\db' is marked as crashed and last (automatic?) repair failed  

This is what I did to resolve it, step by step:

1. went to location C:\xampp\mysql, For you, location may be different, make sure you are in right file location.
2. created backup of the data folder as data-old.
3. copied folder "mysql" from C:\xampp\mysql\backup
4. pasted it inside C:\xampp\mysql\data\ replacing the old mysql folder.

And it worked. Keep in mind, I have already tried around 10 solutions and they didnt work for me. This solutions may or may not work for you but regardless, make backup of your data folder before you do anything.

Note: I would always opt to resolve this with repair command but in my case, i wasnt able to get mysql started at all and i wasnt able to get myisamchk command to work.

Regardless of what you do, create a periodic backup of your database.