Compress files

Let’s compress the directory we’re going to move using gzip:

tar cfvz backup.tar.gz /path/

Dump MySQL database content

mysqldump -uUser -p -hlocalhost database_name > dump.sql

You can also dump several databases with mysqldump by addind the --databases or --all-databases parameter.

Moving files

Now we use SCP to move files to our new machine. The following example copies from the old machine:

scp user@host:/path/backup.tar.gz .

The other way round, copying the file to the new machine from the old one would look like this:

scp backup.tar.gz user@host:/path/backup.tar.gz

Do the same with your database dump.

Uncompress files

Simply type:

tar xfvz backup.tar.gz

Now we should have the same directory structure we had on our old machine.

Import MySQL database

mysql -uUser --default-character-set=utf8 -hlocalhost -p database_name < dump.sql

If you have international content and an utf-8 environment running don’t forget to pass the charset-parameter!