well...the only thing i can think of is that when i restored from the backup when i was doing this, the backup hadn't been updated. i guess i shouldn't count on copies of the table files being up-to-date even though they were just made from the master files. i DID take down the database to avoid this, but iirc the backup was owned by root, so that's possibly what could have happened (mysql was unable to update the files and didn't tell me about it). sorry, people. hopefully it wasn't anything too important, and i'll consider this a lesson learned. the deadbeat users had their revenge, i guess.
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