Table marked as crashed and repair failed

Question

My Joomla 1.5.16 website has started to display the error below. I don't think this is a hack, and I can't find any evidence in the logs of someone trying to get in or any changes to files that shouldn't be there. Any advice appreciated.

Table './patht/jos_users' is marked as crashed and last (automatic?) repair failed

SQL=SELECT offers.*, categories.name AS catName, types.name AS typeName, levels.name AS
 levelName, experiences.name AS experienceName, users.name AS contactName FROM 
jos_neorecruit_offers AS offers LEFT JOIN jos_neorecruit_categories AS categories ON 
offers.category = categories.id LEFT JOIN jos_neorecruit_types AS types ON offers.type = 
types.id LEFT JOIN jos_neorecruit_levels AS levels ON offers.level = levels.id LEFT JOIN 
jos_neorecruit_experiences AS experiences ON offers.experience = experiences.id LEFT JOIN 
jos_users AS users ON offers.contact = users.id WHERE ( ( offers.access != '' AND 
offers.access <= 0 ) OR ( offers.access = '' AND 1 <= 0 ) ) AND offers.published = 1 AND 
categories.published = 1 AND ( offers.publish_up = '0000-00-00 00:00:00' OR offers.publish_up 
<= '2014-05-02 08:37' ) AND ( offers.publish_down = '0000-00-00 00:00:00' OR 
offers.publish_down >= '2014-05-02 08:37' ) ORDER BY offers.created_datetime DESC LIMIT 3

Answer 1

You might need to use MySQL to manually repair the table.

If you can run arbitrary MySQL on your server, run the mysql CLI and use:

REPAIR TABLE jos_users;

Alternatively, phpMyAdmin (supplied by many hosts to manage MySQL databases) allows you to repair tables through a GUI. To do so:

• Access phpMyAdmin and select the Joomla database from the left-hand panel
• Select the jos_users table (or whatever table needs repaired)
• Select Operations from the horizontal top menu
• Select Repair table from the links under Table maintenance