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We retake the management of our server and now we need to make some reverse engineering. We gave to an external company the development of our new Website and they need a dump of database from old site.

The Webserver is on Debian with Apache and MySQL running. I locate the server running on localhost port 3306. The server is on production.

Tried a "longshot" mysqldump : 

web:/home/user# mysqldump -P 3306 -h localhost -u root -p db
Enter password: 
-- MySQL dump 10.11
--
-- Host: localhost    Database: db
-- ------------------------------------------------------
-- Server version       5.0.32-Debian_7etch12-log

/*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@@CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@@CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION=@@COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
/*!40101 SET NAMES utf8 */;
/*!40103 SET @OLD_TIME_ZONE=@@TIME_ZONE */;
/*!40103 SET TIME_ZONE='+00:00' */;
/*!40014 SET @OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS=@@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40014 SET @OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@@FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO' */;
/*!40111 SET @OLD_SQL_NOTES=@@SQL_NOTES, SQL_NOTES=0 */;
mysqldump: Got error: 1049: Unknown database 'db' when selecting the database

I have the root access to the machine. Here my questions:

How can I retrieve the information about the existing databases ?
How can I retrieve access to it (user/pass) ?
How can I make a proper dump ?

Wouter
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cgasp
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2 Answers2

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If you don't have access to mysql anymore you can reset the mysql root password in a ssh session (as root) by first stopping the mysqld socket process by killing the .pid file. Don't use kill -9.

kill `cat /mysql-data-directory/host_name.pid`

Now create a text file with the following Mysql query. Each on a new line. Save it to something like /home/me/mysql-init

UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('MyNewPass') WHERE User='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Now start mysql with the following command: 

mysqld_safe --init-file=/home/me/mysql-init &

You just regained access to mysql with the root user and a new root password. Don't forget to delete the mysql-init file.

With this login information you can show all databases on the server. First login in mysql with the new login information:

mysql --user=root --password=your-password

Now view all databases:

mysql> show databases;

And now you can dump any database you want into a file by using: 

mysqldump -h localhost -u root -p databasename > dumpfile.sql

Or just all databases:

mysqldump -h localhost -u root -p --all-databases > all_dbs.sql
Wouter
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2

The database is obviously not named db.

Why don't you just dump all databases?

mysqldump --all-databases ......
Michael Hampton
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  • web:/home/gps# mysqldump --all-databases mysqldump: Got error: 1045: Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO) when trying to connect web:/home/gps# mysqldump -P 3306 -h localhost -u root --all-databases mysqldump: Got error: 1045: Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO) when trying to connect When I try to dump all – cgasp Jun 07 '13 at 07:40
  • You need to use all of the rest of the options. – Michael Hampton Jun 07 '13 at 07:41
  • web:/home/gps# mysqldump -P 3306 -h localhost -u root --all-databases mysqldump: Got error: 1045: Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO) when trying to connect Seems I don't have the right to connect – cgasp Jun 07 '13 at 07:44
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    You keep forgetting your `-p` option. Why? Have you not read the documentation? Do you not have a system administrator? – Michael Hampton Jun 07 '13 at 07:44
  • First, we don't have the password of database. Second, unfortunately we don't have hardcore skill of sysadmin due we are a network engineers company. – cgasp Jun 07 '13 at 07:55