Question

I am using Centos.
On a production server, it seems, we accidently uninstalled mysql server

We still see folders of our DBs in /var/mysql

What can we do to recover all our data.

Please be sure about what you suggest, this is client production level data.

Thanks

Answer 1

Damn. Don’t tell the client 😉

A pre-step… if the server is still running try to get replication information if you’re server is replicating from somewhere or is a master for someone else. This is a post in of itself, but since I’m guessing your MySQL server is down and you won’t be able to do this I won’t go into it in too much detail.

1. Do a full copy of ALL contents of /var/mysql somewhere safe and your /etc/my.cnf file (make sure permissions are preserved)
2. Install the EXACT same version of mysql and verify it’s working
3. Shut down the new mysql
4. Backup the default newly installed /var/mysql somewhere in case you want it again
5. Copy the original /var/mysql files back as well as the original /etc/my.cnf
6. Pray, Start MySQL, and move along
7. Setup replication settings if needed

If you weren’t replicating, step #8 will be look into setting up replication so you can save your butt the next time this happens and someone actually deletes your database files. (happened to me)