Migrating data from a barebones server to another barebones server

Compress files

Let’s say you have websites in /var/www folder that you want to transfer. Compressing them first will save bandwidth as well as transfer time.

# tar czf <filename> <source>
tar czf aamnah.tar.gz /var/www/aamnah.com

c - create z - compress (gzip) f - take a filename v - verbose (optional, if you wanna see lines fly by on the termianl)

Transfer files

SCP (Secure Copy) to the rescue

scp -P 1234 -i ~/.ssh/blah file1.tar.gz file2.tar.gz file3 file4.sql.gz user@server.domain.com:/location-on-new-server

• You can copy multiple files with one command
• You can specify the SSH port with -P for the target server
• You can pass in an SSH key with -i, saves you the password prompt. Key must already be authenticated with target server.

Backup MySQL databases

# mysqldump -u <uname> -p<pass> <dbname> | gzip -9 > <backupfile.sql.gz>
mysqldump -u username -p --all-databases | gzip -9 > allDatabases.sql.gz

--all-databases will backup ALL databases, including mysql, use, db, tables_priv, and columns_priv etc. These tables include user accounts and global privilieges etc.

Restore MySQL databases

To restore compressed backups

# gunzip < [backupfile.sql.gz] | mysql -u [uname] -p[pass] [dbname]
gunzip allDatabases.sql.gz
mysql -u username -p < allDatabases.sql

For the above to work, the databases need to exits or the backup script needs to have the CREATE DATABASE queries for the databases.

If you’re importing into existing databases, use the mysqlimport command

mysqlimport -u [uname] -p[pass] [dbname] [backupfile.sql]

Links

• How to Back Up and Restore a MySQL Database
• StackOverflow: Backup MySQL users