Ran out of disk space, how to tar without creating copy

Question

I am at 98% of an 8GB SSD, and I have a 3 GB mysql data that I need to gzip and or tar and then download it, so then I can delete it.

How can I tar or gzip the sql (or the mysql tables) so that that I don't have to make a copy of the 3GB file and get disk full errors.

Running Debian 6.

You do know that tar doesn't compress the file, right? Gzipped file will be smaller than the original, but a tar file will be bigger (unless the tar file is zipped). — Andy Lester, Jan 08 '13 at 22:00
Yes I am aware, but if I tar the mysql /var/lib folder then I can just mv it to /var/www and wget it from another server. — ParoX, Jan 08 '13 at 22:13
Since you have access to another server, why don't you just `rsync` or `scp` to that other server without moving files around? (Or creating a new archive.) — Aaron Copley, Jan 08 '13 at 22:34
Transferring that much data to your average 4 GB stick would probably be painfully slow. And external drive would be better if he has a decent interface if the add-a-drive route is preferable. — Bart Silverstrim, Jan 11 '13 at 13:56

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 08 '13 at 22:38

Use the mysqldump utility to direct the file wherever you like:

mysqldump -A -u[username] -p[password] > /path/to/dest/backupname.sql

If you need to, you can pipe the output through gzip:

mysqldump -A -u[username] -p[password] | gzip -c > /path/to/dest/backupname.gz

Further, you can send the output from gzip to another server via ssh:

mysqldump -A -u[username] -p[password] | gzip -c | ssh user@192.168.0.1 'cat >  /path/to/dest/backupname.gz'

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