how to remove duplicate rows in mysql db

Step 1: Move the non duplicates (unique tuples) into a temporary table

CREATE TABLE new_table as
SELECT * FROM old_table WHERE 1 GROUP BY [column to remove duplicates by];

Step 2: delete delete the old table
We no longer need the table with all the duplicate entries, so drop it!

DROP TABLE old_table;

Step 3: rename the new_table to the name of the old_table

RENAME TABLE new_table TO old_table;

And of course, don't forget to fix your buggy code to stop inserting duplicates!