myisampack — Generate Compressed, Read-Only MyISAM Tables Make a backup of each table’s data file using the name  tbl_name .OLD . The directory where character sets are installed. See Section 10.15, “Character Set Configuration” . Write a debugging log. A typical  debug_options  string is  d:t:o, file_name . The default is  d:t:o . This option is available only if MySQL was built using  WITH_DEBUG . MySQL release binaries provided by Oracle are  not  built using this option. Produce a packed table even if it becomes larger than the original or if the intermediate file from an earlier invocation of  myisampack  exists. ( myisampack  creates an intermediate file named tbl_name .TMD  in the database directory while it compresses the table. If you kill  myisampack , the .TMD  file might not be deleted.) Normally,  myisampack  exits with an error if it finds that  tbl_name .TMD exists. With  --force ,  myisampack  packs the table anyway. Join all tables named on the command line into a single packed table  big_tbl_name . All tables that are to be combined  must  have identical structure (same column names and types, same indexes, and so forth). big_tbl_name  must not exist prior to the join operation. All source tables named on the command line to be merged into  big_tbl_name  must exist. The source tables are read for the join operation but not modified. Silent mode. Write output only when errors occur. Do not actually pack the table, just test packing it. Use the named directory as the location where  myisampack  creates temporary files. Verbose mode. Write information about the progress of the packing operation and its result. Display version information and exit. Wait and retry if the table is in use. If the  mysqld  server was invoked with external locking disabled, it is not a good idea to invoke  myisampack  if the table might be updated by the server during the packing process. 581 • --wait ,  -w • --version ,  -V • --verbose ,  -v • --tmpdir= dir_name ,  -T  dir_name • --test ,  -t • --silent ,  -s • --join= big_tbl_name ,  -j  big_tbl_name • --force ,  -f • --debug[= debug_options ] ,  -# [ debug_options ] • --character-sets-dir= dir_name