Is there a way to restrict certain tables from the mysqldump command?
For example, I'd use the following syntax to dump only table1 and table2:
mysqldump -u username -p database table1 table2 > database.sql But is there a similar way to dump all the tables except table1 and table2? I haven't found anything in the mysqldump documentation, so is brute-force (specifying all the table names) the only way to go?
You can use the --ignore-table option. So you could do
mysqldump -u USERNAME -pPASSWORD DATABASE --ignore-table=DATABASE.table1 > database.sql There is no whitespace after -p (this is not a typo).
To ignore multiple tables, use this option multiple times, this is documented to work since at least version 5.0.
If you want an alternative way to ignore multiple tables you can use a script like this:
#!/bin/bash PASSWORD=XXXXXX HOST=XXXXXX USER=XXXXXX DATABASE=databasename DB_FILE=dump.sql EXCLUDED_TABLES=( table1 table2 table3 table4 tableN ) IGNORED_TABLES_STRING='' for TABLE in "${EXCLUDED_TABLES[@]}" do : IGNORED_TABLES_STRING+=" --ignore-table=${DATABASE}.${TABLE}" done echo "Dump structure" mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} --single-transaction --no-data --routines ${DATABASE} > ${DB_FILE} echo "Dump content" mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} ${DATABASE} --no-create-info --skip-triggers ${IGNORED_TABLES_STRING} >> ${DB_FILE} 
mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} --no-create-info ${DATABASE} ${IGNORED_TABLES_STRING} >> ${DB_FILE}Building on the answer from @Brian-Fisher and answering the comments of some of the people on this post, I have a bunch of huge (and unnecessary) tables in my database so I wanted to skip their contents when copying, but keep the structure:
mysqldump -h <host> -u <username> -p <database> --no-data > db.sql mysqldump -h <host> -u <username> -p <database> --no-create-info --skip-triggers --ignore-table=schema.table1 --ignore-table=schema.table2 >> db.sql The resulting file is structurally sound but the dumped data is now ~500MB rather than 9GB, much better for me. I can now import the file into another database for testing purposes without having to worry about manipulating 9GB of data or running out of disk space.
Another example for ignoring multiple tables
/usr/bin/mysqldump -uUSER -pPASS --ignore-table={db_test.test1,db_test.test3} db_test> db_test.sql using --ignore-table and create an array of tables, with syntaxs like
--ignore-table={db_test.table1,db_test.table3,db_test.table4} Import database
# if file is .sql mysql -uUSER -pPASS db_test < backup_database.sql # if file is .sql.gz gzip -dc < backup_database.sql.gz | mysql -uUSER -pPASSWORD db_test Simple script to ignore tables and export in .sql.gz to save space
#!/bin/bash #tables to ignore _TIGNORE=( my_database.table1 my_database.table2 my_database.tablex ) #create text for ignore tables _TDELIMITED="$(IFS=" "; echo "${_TIGNORE[*]/#/--ignore-table=}")" #don't forget to include user and password /usr/bin/mysqldump -uUSER -pPASSWORD --events ${_TDELIMITED} --databases my_database | gzip -v > backup_database.sql.gz Links with information that will help you
Note: tested in ubuntu server with mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.5.55
pv. e.g. pv db.sql.zst | unzst | mysql db (swap out for gzip/xz/...) then you get a visual chart showing progress and ETA
for multiple databases:
mysqldump -u user -p --ignore-table=db1.tbl1 --ignore-table=db2.tbl1 --databases db1 db2 .. 
mysqld and mysqldump would be the same programs.
To exclude some table data, but not the table structure. Here is how I do it:
Dump the database structure of all tables, without any data:
mysqldump -u user -p --no-data database > database_structure.sql Then dump the database with data, except the excluded tables, and do not dump the structure:
mysqldump -u user -p --no-create-info \ --ignore-table=database.table1 \ --ignore-table=database.table2 database > database_data.sql Then, to load it into a new database:
mysql -u user -p newdatabase < database_structure.sql mysql -u user -p newdatabase < database_data.sql 
> database.sql and then for second dump statement simply append to that file using >> database.sql instead. That way you have only a single file to import.You can use the mysqlpump command with the
--exclude-tables=name command. It specifies a comma-separated list of tables to exclude.
Syntax of mysqlpump is very similar to mysqldump, buts its way more performant. More information of how to use the exclude option you can read here: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/mysqlpump.html#mysqlpump-filtering
I like Rubo77's solution, I hadn't seen it before I modified Paul's. This one will backup a single database, excluding any tables you don't want. It will then gzip it, and delete any files over 8 days old. I will probably use 2 versions of this that do a full (minus logs table) once a day, and another that just backs up the most important tables that change the most every hour using a couple cron jobs.
#!/bin/sh PASSWORD=XXXX HOST=127.0.0.1 USER=root DATABASE=MyFavoriteDB now="$(date +'%d_%m_%Y_%H_%M')" filename="${DATABASE}_db_backup_$now" backupfolder="/opt/backups/mysql" DB_FILE="$backupfolder/$filename" logfile="$backupfolder/"backup_log_"$(date +'%Y_%m')".txt EXCLUDED_TABLES=( logs ) IGNORED_TABLES_STRING='' for TABLE in "${EXCLUDED_TABLES[@]}" do : IGNORED_TABLES_STRING+=" --ignore-table=${DATABASE}.${TABLE}" done echo "Dump structure started at $(date +'%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')" >> "$logfile" mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} --single-transaction --no-data --routines ${DATABASE} > ${DB_FILE} echo "Dump structure finished at $(date +'%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')" >> "$logfile" echo "Dump content" mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} ${DATABASE} --no-create-info --skip-triggers ${IGNORED_TABLES_STRING} >> ${DB_FILE} gzip ${DB_FILE} find "$backupfolder" -name ${DATABASE}_db_backup_* -mtime +8 -exec rm {} \; echo "old files deleted" >> "$logfile" echo "operation finished at $(date +'%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')" >> "$logfile" echo "*****************" >> "$logfile" exit 0 For sake of completeness, here is a script which actually could be a one-liner to get a backup from a database, excluding (ignoring) all the views. The db name is assumed to be employees:
ignore=$(mysql --login-path=root1 INFORMATION_SCHEMA \ --skip-column-names --batch \ -e "select group_concat( concat('--ignore-table=', table_schema, '.', table_name) SEPARATOR ' ' ) from tables where table_type = 'VIEW' and table_schema = 'employees'") mysqldump --login-path=root1 --column-statistics=0 --no-data employees $ignore > "./backups/som_file.sql" You can update the logic of the query. In general using group_concat and concat you can generate almost any desired string or shell command.
In general, you need to use this feature when you don't want or don't have time to deal with a huge table. If this is your case, it's better to use --where option from mysqldump limiting resultset. For example, mysqldump -uuser -ppass database --where="1 = 1 LIMIT 500000" > resultset.sql.
In my case, some tables are too big due some BLOB type fields:
Based on some good answers, the procedure I use to do is:
mysqldump -u root -p --no-data <database> > database_full_structure.sql big size tables data:mysqldump -u root -p --no-create-info --ignore-table={<database>.bigTable1,<database>.bigTable2} <database> >> database_full_structure.sql Now we have only one file with full database schema and the data, except the big size tables data.
If you wish, you can rename the exported file to a more semantic name.
Easy to import:
mysql -u root -p <empty_database> < database_full_structure.sql Skip certain tables with mysqldump
Suppose there are some test tables in some databases and you want to exclude them from the backup; you can specify using the -- exclude-tables option, which will exclude tables with the name test across all databases:
shell> mysqldump --exclude-tables=test --resultfile=backup_excluding_test.sql
--ignore-table=database.table is.Dump all databases with all tables but skip certain tables
on github: https://github.com/rubo77/mysql-backup.sh/blob/master/mysql-backup.sh
#!/bin/bash # mysql-backup.sh if [ -z "$1" ] ; then echo echo "ERROR: root password Parameter missing." exit fi DB_host=localhost MYSQL_USER=root MYSQL_PASS=$1 MYSQL_CONN="-u${MYSQL_USER} -p${MYSQL_PASS}" #MYSQL_CONN="" BACKUP_DIR=/backup/mysql/ mkdir $BACKUP_DIR -p MYSQLPATH=/var/lib/mysql/ IGNORE="database1.table1, database1.table2, database2.table1," # strpos $1 $2 [$3] # strpos haystack needle [optional offset of an input string] strpos() { local str=${1} local offset=${3} if [ -n "${offset}" ]; then str=`substr "${str}" ${offset}` else offset=0 fi str=${str/${2}*/} if [ "${#str}" -eq "${#1}" ]; then return 0 fi echo $((${#str}+${offset})) } cd $MYSQLPATH for i in */; do if [ $i != 'performance_schema/' ] ; then DB=`basename "$i"` #echo "backup $DB->$BACKUP_DIR$DB.sql.lzo" mysqlcheck "$DB" $MYSQL_CONN --silent --auto-repair >/tmp/tmp_grep_mysql-backup grep -E -B1 "note|warning|support|auto_increment|required|locks" /tmp/tmp_grep_mysql-backup>/tmp/tmp_grep_mysql-backup_not grep -v "$(cat /tmp/tmp_grep_mysql-backup_not)" /tmp/tmp_grep_mysql-backup tbl_count=0 for t in $(mysql -NBA -h $DB_host $MYSQL_CONN -D $DB -e 'show tables') do found=$(strpos "$IGNORE" "$DB"."$t,") if [ "$found" == "" ] ; then echo "DUMPING TABLE: $DB.$t" mysqldump -h $DB_host $MYSQL_CONN $DB $t --events --skip-lock-tables | lzop -3 -f -o $BACKUP_DIR/$DB.$t.sql.lzo tbl_count=$(( tbl_count + 1 )) fi done echo "$tbl_count tables dumped from database '$DB' into dir=$BACKUP_DIR" fi done With a little help of https://stackoverflow.com/a/17016410/1069083
It uses lzop which is much faster, see:http://pokecraft.first-world.info/wiki/Quick_Benchmark:_Gzip_vs_Bzip2_vs_LZMA_vs_XZ_vs_LZ4_vs_LZO
For example, using --ignore-table, you can export the schema and data of the tables except person and animal tables of apple database to backup.sql as shown below. *You must use multiple --ignore-table to specify multiple tables and you must specify both a database and a table together <database>.<table> for --ignore-table otherwise there is error and my answer explains how to export the schema and data of the tables of a database:
mysqldump -u john -p apple --ignore-table=apple.person --ignore-table=apple.animal > backup.sql And, using -B(--database) and --ignore-table, you can export the schema and data of apple and orange databases except apple database's person table and orange database's animal table to backup.sql as shown below. *My answer explains how to export the schema and data of multiple databases:
mysqldump -u john -p -B apple orange --ignore-table=apple.person --ignore-table=orange.animal > backup.sql And, using -A(--all-databases) and --ignore-table, you can export the schema and data of all databases except apple database's person table and orange database's animal table to backup.sql as shown below. *My answer explains how to export the schema and data of all databases:
mysqldump -u john -p -A --ignore-table=apple.person --ignore-table=orange.animal > backup.sql