How do I restore a dump file from mysqldump?

database, mysql, sql

Solution

It should be as simple as running this:

mysql -u <user> -p < db_backup.dump

If the dump is of a single database you may have to add a line at the top of the file:

USE <database-name-here>;

If it was a dump of many databases, the use statements are already in there.

To run these commands, open up a command prompt (in Windows) and `cd` to the directory where the `mysql.exe` executable is (you may have to look around a bit for it, it'll depend on how you installed mysql, i.e. standalone or as part of a package like WAMP). Once you're in that directory, you should be able to just type the command as I have it above.

Problem

I was given a MySQL database file that I need to restore as a database on my Windows Server 2008 machine. I tried using MySQL Administrator, but I got the following error: The selected file was generated by mysqldump and cannot be restored by this application. How do I get this working?

Original source