backing up database on own computer

Anon

I just have a webhost (not my own server) where I telnet/ftp in to my account. I was wondering if there's a way to backup & download my databases on my own computer and then restore/upload them later on if I needed to.

I don't believe that I can access the files from the FTP (I think it won't let me in the directory).

Anon

what database are you using?

Anon

If you are using say MySQL (a guess) then what you can do is a simple select of all the data to a text file which can be then reuploaded should you ever need to.

Look up "select into oufile" in the MySQL online manual, then when you do the select, simply dump the data in a file you can get to e.g. /home/yoursite/www/backup/mydata.txt

Then if you ever need to restore you can then load that data straight back in - again, that section of the manual will help more.

Hope this helps.

Darren

Anon

Hi,

Assuming that you are using MySQL, you may want to look at the mysqldump command.

The following command dumps your database (for the purposes of this example called 'db).

mysqldump -p db | gzip > db.contents.gz

Then assuming you need to restore it into a new BLANK database called 'db' again.

gunzip < db.contents.gz | mysql -p db

There are many options on the mysqldump command, please check the manual for more info.

Anon

just learned a nice gzip trick, thanks a lot gerry, very useful. didn't think to do that but will now. nice!