mysqldump: Couldn't execute 'show fields from `table`': Incorrect file format error during backup

Symptoms

You may come across the following error during backup:

The backup process encountered the following error:
[2020-12-05 02:12:21 +0200] mysqldump: Couldn't execute 'show fields from `erhard_example_cal_events_p3`': Incorrect file format 'erhard_example_cal_events_p3' (130)

Description 

The error means that mysqldump was not able to view the table's fields. As we can see below the table that reported the issue has a size of 0 which means that a corruption occurred and the table is empty.

# ll /var/lib/mysql/thisisanexample | grep events
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql  17328 Jul 20 23:17 erhard_example_cal_events.frm
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql  260 Jul 20 23:17 erhard_example_cal_events.MYD
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql 2048 Jul 20 23:17 erhard_example_cal_events.MYI
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql  12966 Jul 20 23:17 erhard_example_cal_events_p2.frm
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql 80 Jul 20 23:17 erhard_example_cal_events_p2.MYD
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql 2048 Jul 20 23:17 erhard_example_cal_events_p2.MYI
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql  30360 Nov 22 03:46 erhard_example_cal_events_p3.frm
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql  0 Nov 22 03:46 erhard_example_cal_events_p3.MYD
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql  0 Nov 22 03:46 erhard_example_cal_events_p3.MYI

Workaround

Restore the table manually from backup or restore a whole account backup of the affected user.

Additional resources:

Restore a single database from a MySQL data directory backup

Restore an account from a backup file on the server

If you do not know which database holds the table that is having issues. Use the following query:

mysql> select table_name,table_schema as dbname FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE table_name='mytable_mytable';

+-----------------+--------------+

| table_name | dbname |

+-----------------+--------------+

| mytable_mytable | myfavouritedatabase |

+-----------------+--------------+

1 row in set (0.06 sec)