Backing up and Restoring MySQL with mysqldump

| devops | databases |

I backup and restore databases across servers every few months, but each time I have to resort to reading this very verbose documentation. The steps below are a no fuss way to do this each time.

Backup Server

SSH into the server with the database that you wish to backup run the following command.
mysqldump -u root -p $DB_NAME > $DB_NAME.sql

Copy the File to Destination Server

Using scp, we can securely transfer the backup
scp $DB_NAME.sql $USER@$SERVER:

Restore on Destination Server

SSH into the server with the database that you wish to restore. From the the previous step the backup file should now be located in the root directory.
  1. Create new database
    mysql -u root -p -e 'CREATE DATABASE $DB_NAME'
    
  2. Restore your backup
    mysql -u root -p $DB_NAME < $DB_NAME.sql

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

MusicBrainz Picard identifies songs from *.mp3 files and automatically fixes metadata

In my first attempt to switch from streaming to move back to listening to *.mp3 files, one of the issues I encountered was organization: how to standardize the metadata of the songs? The solution I was familiar with at the time — manually editing each son…

via Manual do Usuário April 24, 2025

Google's control of the web could be coming to an end

It's been hard to avoid the US government's antitrust case against Meta lately, since CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent three days in front of the cameras in Congress, testifying about his company's alleged anti-competitive tactics. But another equall…

via The Torment Nexus April 24, 2025

$5 million in tokens stolen from ZKsync

An attacker compromised an admin account belonging to the ZKsync Ethereum layer-2 project, which is built by Matter Labs. By doing so, they were able to steal approximately $5 million worth of the ZK token, which the project said wer…

via Web3 is Going Just Great April 24, 2025

Generated by openring