4.2.3 Verifying a Backup

To verify that your backup has been successful, restore the backup data on a different server and run the MySQL daemon (mysqld) on the new data directory. You can then execute SHOW statements to verify the database and table structures, and execute queries to verify further details of the database.

See Section 4.2.4, “Restoring a Database” for basic steps for restoring a backup, and see Chapter 5, Recovering or Restoring a Database for more detailed instructions. Running the mysqld daemon on the restored data requires a valid configuration file, which you specify with the --defaults-file option of the mysqld command. You can reuse most of the settings from the original my.cnf file of the backed up MySQL instance, combined with the settings from the backup-my.cnf file, which was created in the temporary directory you specified with --backup-dir when you created a single-image backup (see Section 4.2.2, “Backing Up an Entire MySQL Instance”) and contains a small subset of parameters required by mysqlbackup. Create a new configuration file by concatenating the two files mentioned above into a new one, and use that file on the server on which you perform the verification. Edit the file to make sure the datadir parameter points to the right location on the verification server. Edit the values for port, socket, and so on if you need to use different connection settings on the verification server.