but not confident enough to know if I can restore the database correctly.
Ah oke, I understand, that is something we can help you with.
You could as root via SSH create a temporary directory under root, like /root/temp and then copy the tar.gz in there and extract it.
You can also unpack it with winrar on your pc and then upload the needed files via FTP.
Also the mysql backup, you can place somewhere on the account. There are a couple of ways to restore the backup.
First use phpmyadmin or Directadmin itself and delete the current mysql database, create a new one, if possible with the same name and password which was used before, or in phpmyadmin just delete all content of the database.
Then restoring:
1.) Use phpmyadmin to import the .sql file into the database you selected.
2.) Use a mysql command as root to import the restore the database, which can be done like this:
mysql -uUSERNAME -p DATABASENAME < /path/to/the/backup.sql
for -p you will get the password asked as soon as you press enter.
You can also check /usr/local/directadmin/conf/my.cnf for the da_admin user and password, this can be done too, you would get the command like this:
mysql -uda_admin -p DATABASENAME < /path/to/the/backup.sql
still you have to replace DATABASENAME (does not need to be in capitals) with the name of the databasename and ofcourse change the path to the backup sql file to where you have placed it.
but it doesn't ask me where I want the restore to go except to the I.P. of the shared server.
No it doesn't indeed, but it's fairly easy. It always restores to the accountname. So for example the backup file is named:
user.admin.john.tar.gz
Then the account will be placed with admin as the creator, and all restoring will be done under /home/john so if john has a domain name imjohn.com then after restore it would be found in:
/home/john/domains/imjohn.com/public_html
so this is the way you can see where it is restored. If you want to restore it to /home/peter then you should rename the .tar.gz file accordingly. But be aware, things will be overwritten, including all passwords, with the one from the backup.
Als except for the IP address, take care that the new DNS/nameservers are used from the current server and not the ones from the backup unless it came from the same server.
