Importing and exporting a MySQL database via SSH

phpMyAdmin is fine for small databases, but push it too hard and things fall apart — the browser times out, large dumps fail to upload, and you're left staring at an error page. For anything substantial, it's far better to handle imports and exports directly over SSH. It's faster, more reliable, and there are no file size limits to worry about.

Import

mysql -uUSER -pPASSWORD DBNAME < /path/to/DUMPFILE.sql

Note: there's no space between the -u and -p flags and their values.

Where:

• USER — your database username (e.g. u111111_dbuser)
• PASSWORD — your database password
• DBNAME — the name of the database you're importing into (e.g. u111111_database)
• /path/to/DUMPFILE.sql — the full path to your dump file

Export

mysqldump -uUSER -pPASSWORD DBNAME > /path/to/DUMPFILE.sql

Same rule applies: no space between -u, -p and their values.

Where:

• USER — your database username (e.g. u111111_dbuser)
• PASSWORD — your database password
• DBNAME — the name of the database you're exporting (e.g. u111111_database)
• /path/to/ — the directory where the dump file will be saved
• DUMPFILE.sql — the filename for the exported dump