Backup and Restore

I'm not sure if this is in the right place, mods please move at your discretion.

I take regular database backups and download them to my hdd and also copy them to a removeable hdd for safety. All very commendable I hear you say, but here is my problem, I have not got the know how or ability to restore these backups should the need arise. How is it done? Do I need any specialized software? I tried to restore my main database to my test forum to make testing more realistic using several guides that I googled but I couldn't do it.

Any pointers? I 'd rather figure this out now than try to do it in a genuine recovery situation.


I'm running vB 3.8.4 PL2

 

Blubble database restores are best done from the command line. You can do smaller restores through phpmyadmin but I've always had trouble with anything over a few megabytes.

Here's a good tutorial on backing up and restoring a database via ssh (command line) How to Backup Your MySql Database - vBulletin and Computer Help Forum

 

Small databases can usually be restored from cpanel, or a php script like mysql dumper.

Larger databases, they need to be restored from the command line.

PHP scripts can timeout when restoring large databases - leaving you with a partial restore. Which is something you do not want happening.

 

Moved to Hosting section.

 

You could always upload the backup to somewhere above public_html/ and request for your host to restore the files from the particular backup you uploaded, not perfect but good if you dont know how to do so via the command line.

 

Thanks for the replies guys, very helpful.
I'm going to try out the method Big Dan linked to on my test database as soon as I can.

My hosting company are extremely helpful but they are a 9 to 5 Mon-Fri operation and I need to be able to be able to do stuff out of hours. I'd hate the site to go down on Friday evening and not come back up until Monday at the earliest.

 

Best of luck if you have any trouble post back.