sacr0

As I have had to move a site to other hosting I have had to overcome the backup / restore problem that mambo has, and for that matter phpAdmin.
This thread assumes that you can access your 'Administration Area' of your Mambo and you understand a little Sql.

My database is 12mb. 11.9mb of that is the table 'mos_content'. Backing this up from mambo is impossible and restoring via Mambo or phpAdmin times me out or errors or both :P

Via phpAdmin, backup the table 'mos_content' to a your hard drive as mos_content.sql

Via phpAdmin backup the rest of the tables to your hard drive. Yes as sql as well.

upload the backup of the rest of the tables to your new mambo '/administrator/backups/'

open 'mos_content.sql' in notepad. using notepad create 2 more text files called 'mos_content-x' and 'mos_content-y'

Copy half to each text file with the first half in x and the second in y.

Rename both with sql extensions and upload them to the new mambo '/administrator/backups/' folder.

Now you can restore your db's from the 'System -> Restore' area of your Administration Area in Mambo.

This worked for me with the 'mos_content' table split into 2 (approx 6mb) pieces. If you still have problems try smaller pieces. Around 4mb.
Maybe this workaround will give developers some ideas on somehow possibly splitting the backups into 4->5mb chunks and then Mambo wouldn't have to stress with a growing, single, 'mos_content' table.

Hope this helps someone

Kymberly

Just an added note, if you have ssh access to the site you could use the <scp> command the retrieve & restore the site.

You may also querry the db with mysqldump,

mysqldump -u db_username -p db_name > /path/to/backup.sql

to retrieve, to restore simply

mysql -u db_username -p db_name < /path/to/backup.sql

Hope this helps someone