From the linux command line, these commands let you backup and restore a SugarCRM database.

Update 2016-04-26: Just saw this SugarCRM KB Providing a Backup Without Sensitive Data which is really useful. Thanks Jared.

Firstly, for a proper back up of SugarCRM you’ll need two files, one containing the application files, one containing the SQL database.

First up, the backup…

Backup files : Change to the folder you want to backup, then…

tar -zcvf CRM-BACKUP-FILES.tar.gz .

Edit: if you get an error ‘Permission Denied’ you may be trying to write to a folder you don’t have permission for, instead try writing to ~/CRM-BACKUP-FILES.tar.gz and it will likely work.

Edit: see also this StackOverflow article.

Backup sql (empty copy of the database):

mysqldump -u USERNAME -p -–no-data DATABASENAME > CRM-BACKUP-SQL.sql

Backup sql (with the data):

mysqldump -u USERNAME -p DATABASENAME > CRM-BACKUP-SQL.sql

Then you can ‘tar’ the .sql file with

tar -zcvf DATABASENAME-mysql.tar.gz DATABASENAME-mysql.sql

Backup just a single table

mysqldump db_name table_name | gzip > table_name.sql.gz

If you only want the database schema, then in the SugarCRM web application you can do the following:

• Admin
• Diagnostic Tool
• db schema
• Download that file

Then for the restoration…

Restore files  (to current folder):

tar -zxvf CRM-BACKUP-FILES.tar.gz

Restore sql:

mysql -u USERNAME -p DATABASENAME < CRM-BACKUP-SQL.sql

Restore just a single table

gunzip < table_name.sql.gz | mysql -u username -p db_name

These SugarCRM Knowledge Base articles may also be of use:

• The process of migrating a potentially broken instance to a clean install.
• Migrating an On-Demand instance to an On-Site instance.
• Migrating an On-Site instance to an On-Demand instance.