MySql 1050: MySQLSyntaxErrorException: Table 'my_db/#sql-ib520' already exists - mysql

Question

I've tried to execute the following ALTER TABLE statement:
ALTER TABLE `my_table` ADD COLUMN `new_column` LONGTEXT NULL DEFAULT NULL AFTER `old_column`;
During the execution of the script I've got
com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.CommunicationsException: Communications link failure
It appears that this left database in inconsistent state, since no new field was added, and when I try to execute the script again, I'm getting this strange error.
com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLSyntaxErrorException: Table 'my_db/#sql-ib520' already exists
I do not have #sql-ib520 table in my database, so to my understanding it must be some temp table created by the MySQL.
Does anyone encountered this error before, and how could I solve it?
Thanx
Edit
I've tried the script suggested by Alex, but I had not worked:
drop table `#mysql50##sql-ib520`;
ERROR 1051 (42S02): Unknown table 'my_db.#mysql50##sql-ib520'
Update
I'm using Amazon RDS with MySQL 5.6.12

Answer 1

I'm using an AWS RDS instance as well, and did a ton of reading on this problem. While I didn't find a great solution, here's how I fixed it by only replacing one table instead of the entire database.
If you run this command:
SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.INNODB_SYS_TABLES
you can see the full list of database tables, including the orphaned table, which isn't normally visible. The two problem tables for me were:
ID NAME
407 my_database/#sql-ib379
379 my_database/users
because I was attempting to ALTER my users table when the DB crashed. Now, as mentioned above, I couldn't run any further ALTER TABLE commands because it was trying to create the same temporary table for any subsequent queries. I tried everything to DROP the orphaned table, but with the 'my_database/' part, it didn't seem possible. I also didn't want to drop and recreate my entire database, and I noticed that the orphaned table is referencing an internal ID of the users table (#sql-ib379), so I figured I would just swap it out. Here's a little MySQL script that did the trick for me:
-- temporarily disable foreign key checks
SET foreign_key_checks = 0;
-- replace this line with query to create a structural copy of the users table
-- named users_copy, including foreign keys if you use them
-- copy everything from original table into new table
INSERT INTO `users_copy` SELECT * FROM `users`;
Make sure everything looks ok, and then run:
-- rename the existing table
RENAME TABLE `users` TO `users_backup`;
-- in case the copy process took some time, and there were additional rows added
-- to the original table, grab them and put them into the copy table
INSERT INTO `users_copy` SELECT * FROM `users_backup` WHERE `users_backup`.id > (SELECT MAX(id) FROM `users_copy`);
-- finally, rename the copy table to the original table name
RENAME TABLE `users_copy` TO `users`;
- re-enable foreign key checks
SET foreign_key_checks = 1;
If you are not using foreign keys, you should be good to go now. I would recommend keeping the backup table around for a bit just in case, but once you remove that backup table, it should remove the orphaned table as well. If you are using foreign keys however, it is very important that you update any references to the original table name (in this case, users)! Depending on how you have your foreign keys setup, other tables that were dependent on users will now reference users_backup, which could cause problems with lost data.
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

After all, since I'm using AWS RDS instance, the script recommended by Alex did not work.
MySQL documentation also recommends this script, you can find more info here about orphaned intermediate tables.
For AWS RDS I've found only one post with no solution provided by Amazon staff. You might want to follow this post in case some solution is provided.
So, at the moment, my only solution was to dump the existing database and create a new one.