On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 12:19 +0530, Chandru wrote: > Hi, > > Did u try using this command > > > mysqldump --opt db_name > db_name.sql -p 2>>bkp.err
Not quite. Firstly, I had to alter the normal backup cron job, and that doesn't happen until late at night. Secondly, yes I added the redirection to capture errors. There were none ( empty file this time ). Thirdly, I didn't use '--opt'. I had no other suggestions yesterday ( before I went to bed anyway - there's 1 in my inbox this morning ), so I did some experimenting of my own and changed the dump command to: mysqldump --skip-opt --add-drop-table --add-locks --create-options --quick --lock-tables --set-charset --disable-keys dbmail > dbmail.sql -pSOME_PASSWORD 2>>bkp.err This made mysql do 1 insert per record. The backup *appears* to have completed successfully. At least the end of the dump file looks valid. It ends dumping the last table, then a view, then I get: -- Dump completed on 2009-01-13 17:23:13 Previously it just finished part-way through dumping a blob. I have yet to do extensive testing on it. I suppose I should try importing the dump file into another server and see if I get the correct number of rows in each table ... The only issue now is that the dump file is much smaller than I would have expected. When using --opt, I was getting 30GB dump files. I would have expected the current format ( 1 insert statement per record ) to be much bigger, but it's 23GB. Now having said that, I did email the current DB administrator and ask him to get people to archive all emails with huge attachments somewhere on a network share ( people have some pretty big attachments ). Also I asked him to get people to clean out their Trash ( which happens only when we tell them to ). So I suppose it's not completely infeasible that this alone is responsible for the difference. Anyway, it's been a very disconcerting experience. It goes without saying that people would expect that anything that gets into a MySQL database should be able to be backed up by mysqldump. And it's worrying that the default --opt can't do that. When I get some time I'll enter a bug ... Thanks for you help Chandru. Dan -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql?unsub=arch...@jab.org