[cobalt-users] Re:MySQL Restore

[Charlie Summers <charlie@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2:26 PM -0400 9/9/02, ISEE Multimedia is rumored to have typed:

> A client of mine tried to do a dump of his tables in mysql and dropped the
> table by mistake, he hasnt backed it up but if i do a locate of his database
> as root it returns all the .frm .ISM and .ISD files, however if i try and
> navigate to this directory and ls there are no files.

   When the tables were dropped, they were deleted from the hard drive. That
locate makes them _appear_ to exist only shows how locate works; a nightly
task which updates the locate database. (Touch a file like
trashthisreallysoon and then locate on it; you won't find it. locate is
always only as current as the last run of updatedb.)

   Sorry to give you the bad news, but if he dropped the tables without a
backup they no longer exist and he will need to recreate them. The only
backup that might exist is your system backups. (You DO make full-system
backups, yes?)

   IMHO, mysqldump is the simplest way of doing a dump, and it CANNOT drop
tables (although it can add a DROP TABLE line to the dump, it doesn't have
the ability to remove a table or database). Using GUI interface to mySQL s
lead to _exactly_ this type of problem, IMHO, since they try to hide learning
how things work from the user, and allow the wrong buttons to be pressed. (If
you don't trust him to properly perform the dump, add a cronjob to do it for
him every night.)

         Charlie (who still uses user crontabs, and can't get used to
                   /etc/cron.hourly and the like...)