How to restore database info to a new Sugar Installation?

[ogg]

The thing is I made a (big) mistake without a backup, working last night I erase our crm folder in our web server (hosted web service), I tryed to restore from a backup copy, but it is too old and as I can see it, it was made before we finish the original installation. The database appear complete fine, it reside in the same hosted service and it is MySQL, the great answer could be a database importer to a new installation, if not any help will be apreciated. Thank you guys!


Hosting Server:
FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE

SugarCRM Version:
Unknown (Recent)

SQL Server
Welcome to phpMyAdmin 2.6.2-pl1
MySQL 4.1.25-log running on localhost as oggzz-1@localhost

PHP Ver 5

[roblaus]

I just hope that you are not the IT guy but the owner of this shop. You can't fire yourself...

Yes of course you can restore your db to a new installation. There are two things you need to know though:
Which version of Sugar were you running (check table config and upgrade_history) because your new one must be the same version.
Were there any customisations done - check whether there are any tables with _cstm. If yes - well then start thinking what you did and where and how much time it takes to do them again.

But in any case, I think you should talk to a pro...

[ogg]

Thanks Roblaus

Have you seen a manual or instructions to try this?
Supposing I find all the information we require.

[roblaus]

No, there is no manual that describes exactly this case. But there are tons of posts here describing how to restore a database.
I'd be doing the following:
1. First check your version as decribed above.
2. Get the Sugar version that matches your db
3. Install it
4. Edit your config.php and change the db name, user and pwd to the old ones
5. Log in and see whether it works (it should)
6. If there are any _cstm tables - rename them to _cstm_old
7. Create your new custom fields (assuming that they will be the same as the old ones)
8. Copy the content of your old _cstm tables into the new ones that will have bieen creatred by Sugar then (if required field by field)

And yes, there are other ways to achive that but this seems to be the easiest one. If there are no custom fields you are done with pt. 5.
If there were any other customisations like added dropdown lists - i am afraid those are gone for good because they are stored in the directories.