How can I copy contents out of MySQL folder without giving ownership of the folder to root in Linux?

Question

I am attempting to back up a MySQL database on a Linux server before I install some upgrades to the software (Omeka) which is using the database.

The command supplied by Omeka documentation for that is the following:

mysqldump -h localhost -u username -p omeka_db_name > omeka_db_backup.sql

However, when I run this, I get the ever so helpfully vague message of "permission denied." It does this if I run the command as sudo. It does this no matter what directory I try to save the backup file to. It doesn't prompt me for a MySQL password when I run mysql dump, but it does when I run "mysql" command and it accepts the password I put in so I know the issue isn't that I'm using the wrong credentials.

I cannot navigate to the MySQL folder directly in shell and when I use WinSCP to access the server, the MySQL folder is listed as owned by "MySQL" and not by "root." So I'm assuming that I don't have permission to copy anything from this folder and that is my problem. I don't want to willy nilly assign ownership of the MySQL folder to root because I'm afraid it might break MySQL's ability to read and write from this folder.

All I want to do is copy the database files somewhere as backup. Heck, I'll copy the whole MySQL folder someplace if I have to do that. How can I do that without breaking MySQL?

Answer 1

Root has permissions for everything. There may be some additional safeguards, depending (there is some security software that limits root permissions). You can just use: mysqldump -h localhost -u username -p omeka_db_name > /path/to/some/other/directory/omeka_db_backup.sql

And put backup in directory you can normally access. If you use the mysqldump you don't need to write to mysql dir.