How to Backup Databases with MySQL­Dump­er

The backup, MySQL­Dump­er is a popular al­tern­at­ive to phpMy­Ad­min, the most common pre-installed programme. A great advantage of the dumper: it can be used to manage very large databases, back up several databases sim­ul­tan­eously, and also restore them. A local backup is carried out, which means that no data is saved on an external server or in the Cloud. Unlike plugins and other ex­ten­sions, the Dumper functions in­de­pend­ently of the content man­age­ment system being used.

The most important features at a glance:

• simple backup and res­tor­a­tion of MySQL databases
• e-mail no­ti­fic­a­tion after a suc­cess­ful backup
• automatic dispatch of backups via FTP
• pos­sib­il­ity of managing several backup files
• multipart-backup
• SQL browser
• supplied Perl script
• directory pro­tec­tion

Avoiding timeout errors

A big problem regarding backups and PHP: PHP scripts are usually aborted after a runtime of 30 seconds and therefore most tools can usually only establish a backup up to a given maximum size. If the script is aborted, a full backup copy cannot be created. MySQL­Dump­er avoids this timeout error by only selecting a certain number of data sets from the table. The programme then memorises the point at which the backup has stopped. It then picks up again from this same point after the timeout and thus avoids a server ter­min­a­tion. The same principle is also used when restoring data.

Below we have explained step-by-step how to install MySQL­Dump­er. Thanks to a practical set-up assistant, the in­stall­a­tion will run quickly and easily and won’t burden you with any technical hurdles or dif­fi­culties.

1. Download and upload

The in­stall­a­tion is simple and doesn’t require any special technical knowledge. In order to start the MySQL­Dump­er in­stall­a­tion, you have to download the current version of the program in the form of a ZIP archive. The current version of MySQL­Dump­er is available to download on GitHub. After the ZIP archive has been unzipped the files can be uploaded to the web space via FTP (e.g. with the free FileZilla program).

2. Open the program in the browser

After the upload you can simply call up the programme via your web browser. The address under which the MySQL­Dump­er is filed depends on the register that the files have been deposited in (HTML file or in its own subfolder).

3. Set-up assistant

The dumper’s set-up assistant leads the user step-by-step through the in­stall­a­tion and con­fig­ur­a­tion process. After you have selected language pref­er­ences and confirmed the in­stall­a­tion process, you have to adjust some database para­met­ers. The following in­form­a­tion is needed:

• database host name
• database user
• database password

The programme needs this in­form­a­tion to connect to your MySQL server. You can skip the remaining database boxes such as the port and socket.

4. Create a con­nec­tion to MySQL database

If all entered para­met­ers are correct, a no­ti­fic­a­tion will appear informing you that the database was found. All available databases are listed in the window. Click on “save and continue in­stall­a­tion”. The rest of the set-up happens auto­mat­ic­ally.

5. Create dir­ect­or­ies

For the last step, MySQL­Dump­er creates several dir­ect­or­ies, which normally happens auto­mat­ic­ally. If this doesn’t work, you can create a “work” folder in FileZilla and then create further “backup”, “config” and “log” sub­folders.

Now the in­stall­a­tion is complete and the MySQL­Dump­er home page will open.

On the developer site you will find helpful video tutorials for each in­di­vidu­al step. Here is a video tutorial for the MySQL­Dump­er in­stall­a­tion:

Con­fig­ur­a­tion

The basic settings of the programme can generally be accepted. If you have certain re­quire­ments or are working with es­pe­cially large and extensive amounts of data, you can perform ad­di­tion­al settings. The general settings can be found by clicking on “general” in the menu. You also have the option of com­press­ing the log file of the MySQL­Dump­er and in­dic­at­ing the maximum size. It is also possible to adjust the maximum limit of the utilised internal memory allocated to the script execution.

Res­tor­a­tion settings:

• delete the database before the res­tor­a­tion
• trouble shooting pref­er­ences
• ignoring enable keys (with regards to large databases)

The backup can be created after the con­fig­ur­a­tion. In the left nav­ig­a­tion bar, you'll find the “backup” option. This is how to proceed:

1. Enter comments

This feature lets you comment on or name in­di­vidu­al backups, which is es­pe­cially useful when creating several backups. For example, the remark “backup December 2015” informs you of when your database was last backed-up.

2. Choose resources

You can choose which areas of your database should be backed up. If you want a complete backup, click “select all”.

3. Start the backup

Click on “start backup” and the programme will begin to create the backup copy. The current process is shown in the browser window and depending on the size of the data, it can take several seconds or sometimes even minutes.

If the process is completed, a cor­res­pond­ing no­ti­fic­a­tion will appear in the browser window. Under “file ad­min­is­tra­tion” you can find a list of all created backups which are grouped together based on the different databases.

From this overview you can see:

• whether the database was com­pressed
• which script was used
• when the backup was created
• whether a multi-part backup was created
• how big the backup is
• how many tables or entries it contains