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 ...