SQL vs gz backups

Damn. A couple of my sites were moved by a webhost recently across their servers. Visiting today for some routine template work shows that at least two of the sites are pretty screwed. Looks like the databases didn’t carry over very well.

That’s no problem - I’m a diligent webmaster - I make regular backups of everything.

Trouble is, normally I rely on the CPanel backup function, which gzips files for doanload. And now I’m having real problems doing anything with my .gz backups.

Note to self - from now on, do all backups via PHPmyAdmin, and get straight SQL files.

EDIT: Last backups failed, but the backups before then worked fine loading in PHPmyAdmin. Lesson remains true, though - keep the SQL files pure, not gzipped through CPanel. :)

EDIT 2: For the second site that had failed, even the second backup didn’t work - invalid syntax on 6 lines through the database file. I ended up having to download a database from another site, see what the offending lines should be; upload the faulty backup to CPanel, unzip it, save it, edit out the syntax errors in .Edit, rename as a SQL file, then upload back into the database.

Webmastering is never as straightforward as it should be…