What would cause this error when upgrading Panels module? $ drush up panels
Code updates will be made to the following projects: Panels [panels-7.x-3.4]

Note: A backup of your project will be stored to backups directory if it is not managed by a supported version control system.
Note: If you have made any modifications to any file that belongs to one of these projects, you will have to migrate those modifications after updating.
Do you really want to continue with the update process? (y/n): y
Project panels was updated successfully. Installed version is now 7.x-3.4.
Backups were saved into the directory /home/bzisad0/drush-backups/newco/20140724235906/modules/panels.       [ok]
WD php: PDOException: SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'newco.cache_panels' doesn't [error]
exist: TRUNCATE {cache_panels} ; Array
(
)
 in cache_clear_all() (line 165 of
/var/www/vhosts/www.companyname.com/releases/20131007153705/includes/cache.inc).
PDOException: SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table &amp;#039;newco.cache_panels&amp;#039; doesn&amp;#039;t exist: TRUNCATE {cache_panels} ; Array
(
)
 in cache_clear_all() (line 165 of /var/www/vhosts/www.companyname.com/releases/20131007153705/includes/cache.inc).
Drush command terminated abnormally due to an unrecoverable error.                                           [error]
Backups were restored successfully.                                                                          [ok]


The only clue I have is that the company I'm doing work for underwent a merger, and we had to set up the new web site before the name of the new company was public, so everything went by "newco".  I could not find anywhere that this is configured in Drupal, but I see that showing up in the error message "Base table or view not found: 'newco.cache_panels' doesn't exist".

I'm not sure if that's relevant or not, but I'm mentioning it just in case, and hoping it's not a red herring.
For some reason, the "cache_panels" table of panel used for cache is missing.

It's reported as an issue for this module.

To solve this error, first, I strongly recommend to do a backup of the database before make any change (even before do a drush updb or update a specific module as you are trying in this case).

You cloud try one of the following solutions:


Using drush, follow this proposed solution.
Using a SQL query, follow this other solution.


I recommend you to use the first alternative as I see that you use drush.