If you use a MySQL database to store your precious data, it is very important that you make regular backups of your data to protect it from loss. This article will show you how to backup and restore the data in your MySQL database. You can also use this process to move your data to a new server.
Backing up your MySQL database
The fastest and easiest method to backup and restore your MySQL database is to use MySQLDump. If you have shell or telnet access to your web server, you can backup your MySQL data with the mysqldump command. Here is the proper syntax:
mysqldump -u [uname] -p [pass] [dbname] > [backupfile.sql] [uname] - this is your database username [pass]- this is the password for your database [dbname] - the name of your database [backupfile.sql] - the filename for your database backup
To backup a database named 'Customers' with the username 'sadmin' and the password 'pass21' to a file custback.sql, you would issue this command:
mysqldump -u sadmin -p pass21 Customers > custback.sql
Issuing that command will backup the MySQL database 'Customers' to a file called custback.sql. This file can then be copied to a safe location or stored on backup media.
Restoring your MySQL database
In the event that you need to re-build your MySQL database from scratch, you can easily restore the mysqldump file created above by issuing the following command (this method won't work if the tables already exist in your database):
mysql - u sadmin -p pass21 Customers < custback.sql
If you need to restore a database that already exists, you'll need to use MySQLImport. The proper syntax for mysqlimport is:
mysqlimport [options] database textfile1
To restore your previously created custback.sql dump back to your 'Customers' MySQL database, you'd use:
mysqlimport -u sadmin -p pass21 Customers custback.sql
About the author:
Vinu Thomas is a web design and IT consultant. You can visit him at http://www.vinuthomas.com or discuss this article or any PHP/MYSQL related issues in our Discussion Forums at http://www.vinuthomas.com/forum2.html.
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