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 --passwordargument 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 rootuser‘s password, like this:

Enter password: _

Once I enter that password, my drupaldb database is dumped to a file in the current directory nameddrupaldb-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.