Restore a partial backup

Restoring should be done by restoring individual tables in the partial backup to the server.

It can also be done by copying back the prepared backup to a “clean” datadir (in that case, make sure to include the mysql database) to the datadir you are moving the backup to. A system database can be created with the following:

$ sudo mysql --initialize --user=mysql

Once you start the server, you may see mysql complaining about missing tablespaces:

Expected output

2021-07-19T12:42:11.077200Z 1 [Warning] [MY-012351] [InnoDB] Tablespace 4, name 'test1/t1', file './d2/test1.ibd' is missing!
2021-07-19T12:42:11.077300Z 1 [Warning] [MY-012351] [InnoDB] Tablespace 4, name 'test1/t1', file './d2/test1.ibd' is missing!

In order to clean the orphan database from the data dictionary, you must manually create the missing database directory and then DROP this database from the server.

Example of creating the missing database:

$ mkdir /var/lib/mysql/test1/d2

Example of dropping the database from the server:

mysql> DROP DATABASE d2;

Expected output

Query OK, 2 rows affected (0.5 sec)

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Last update: 2023-06-12