MySQL backup - How to backup a MySQL database

MySQL backup FAQ: How do I backup a MySQL database?

I can't speak about backing up MySQL databases that are modified twenty-four hours a day seven days a week, but on all the MySQL databases I currently work with, there are always times when I can guarantee that there won't be any SQL INSERTs, DELETEs, or UPDATEs occurring, so I find it's really easy to perform a MySQL backup using the mysqldump utility program. Here's how it works.

Create a MySQL backup with mysqldump

I was just working on a Drupal database, and decided that I wanted to make a backup of Drupal's MySQL database before I did something that might screw up the database (converting a WordPressdatabase to a Drupal database). So, I made a backup of my current MySQL Drupal database using the following

mysqldump

command:

mysqldump --opt --user=root --password drupaldb > drupaldb-20090505.sql

　　

Note that in this command,

drupaldb

is the name of my database, not the password. The

--password

argument just tells MySQL to prompt me for the password, because I don't want to type it right here on the command line. So, immediately after I enter that command, MySQL prompts me for the

root

user's password, like this:

Enter password: _

　　

Once I enter that password, my

drupaldb

database is dumped to a file in the current directory named

drupaldb-20090505.sql

.

MySQL backup - A slightly different syntax

Note that you can also enter your

mysqldump

command as shown next, which is equivalent to the previous command:

mysqldump --opt -u root -p drupaldb > drupaldb-20090505.sql

　　

In both of these examples, the

20090505

portion of the filename just indicates today's date, May 5, 2009. (Happy Cinco de Mayo. :)

MySQL backup - The general form of mysqldump

That was one specific example of the

mysqldump

command. The general form of the backup command is shown here:

mysqldump --opt -u username -p database-name > backup-file-name

　　

where:

username

can be

root

, if you know the

root

password, or it can be the name of the MySQL user that owns your database.

database-name

is the name of your database, which in my case was

drupaldb

.

backup-file-name

is the name of the backup file you want to create. This will be a plain text file that the

mysqldump

command creates for you.

MySQL database backup shell script

I just created a new MySQL database backup (dump) shell script to automate MySQL backups. In addition to creating this shell script, I've added new MySQL command line options not shown in this example. If you need to use additional mysqldump command line options, see that article for more information.