MySQL ERROR 1005: Can’t create table

I am experiencing the weirdest behaviour with MySQL. I can’t seem to be able to create a particular table.

E.g.:


mysql> create table `devices` (id bigint(20) unsigned not null auto_increment primary key) engine=InnoDb default character set=utf8 collate=utf8_bin ;
ERROR 1005 (HY000): Can't create table './couffable_global/devices.frm' (errno: 150)


However, if I change the table name to `foo`, it works:

mysql> create table foo (id bigint(20) unsigned not null auto_increment primary key) engine=InnoDb default character set=utf8 collate=utf8_bin ;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)


And no, the devices table does not already exist.

I was doing this in an already created database, as part of a data migration exercise. I already had a database with a table called devices. I was uploading an SQL dump to it. The dump would first DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `devices` and then CREATE TABLE `devices` ( ....) . This would not work.

If I start from a clean database, this would work. So I am assuming the presence of some other table is causing this.