[support] Backup & migrate

[Roger]

On 22/10/10 23:00, support-request at drupal.org wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 05:52:34 -0700
> From: Michelle Ziegmann<michelle at media.berkeley.edu>
> Subject: Re: [support] Backing up and migrating a drupal site
> To:support at drupal.org
> Message-ID:<4CC03792.7030600 at media.berkeley.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Also, when you restore using Backup-Migrate, make sure all of the files
> on the server you're migrating to are EXACTLY the same as the one you
> backed up from. I've found something as little as a different version of
> a module between sites will blow things up.
>
> You definitely need 2 processes - Backup-Migrate takes care of your
> database, but also need to migrate all files.
>
> Michelle
Thanks Michelle and everyone.
So it seems I need a vanilla install of the same version of Drupal.
Then copy all the /sites/all directories & files across to my machine.
Install backup_migrate module on my new installation.
Point backup_migrate to the .sql backup I downloaded from the server and 
things [should] work.

Moses mentioned doing a backup of the whole www directory, this is 
impractical for me for 2 reasons.
1. it's huge and has thousands of files that are of no interest to my 
Drupal work
2. it would tend to overwrite the /var/www files and system I use on my 
machine.
Instead I did a backup_migrate of the drupal directory

For a fresh install I need a database of the same name and password. I 
don't know the database password.

Will using backup_migrate simply write to or recreate that new database 
or will it overwrite all the files that the drupal fresh install created?
I suspect it will overwrite and this is where there could be a conflict 
between a fresh install and the server copy files.

Thanks
Roger