To export If it's an entire DB, then: $ mysqldump - u [ uname ] - p [ pass ] db_name > db_backup . sql If it's all DBs, then: $ mysqldump - u [ uname ] - p [ pass ] --all-databases > all_db_backup.sql If it's specific tables within a DB, then: $ mysqldump - u [ uname ] - p [ pass ] db_name table1 table2 > table_backup . sql You can even go as far as auto-compressing the output using gzip (if your DB is very big): $ mysqldump - u [ uname ] - p [ pass ] db_name | gzip > db_backup . sql . gz If you want to do this remotely and you have the access to the server in question, then the following would work (presuming the MySQL server is on port 3306): $ mysqldump - P 3306 - h [ ip_address ] - u [ uname ] - p [ pass ] db_name > db_backup . sql To import Type the following command to import sql data file: $ mysql - u username - p - h localhost DATA-BASE-NAME < data . sql In this example, import 'data.sql' file ...