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Migrate from MySQL SQL Files Using TiDB Lightning

This document describes how to migrate data from MySQL SQL files to TiDB using TiDB Lightning. For details on how to generate MySQL SQL files, refer to Dumpling.

The data migration process described in this document uses TiDB Lightning. The steps are as follows.

Step 1: Deploy TiDB Lightning

Before you start the migration, deploy TiDB Lightning.

Note

If you choose the Local-backend to import data, the TiDB cluster cannot provide services during the import process. This mode imports data quickly, which is suitable for importing a large amount of data (above the TB level).
If you choose the TiDB-backend, the cluster can provide services normally during the import, at a slower import speed.
For detailed differences between the two backend modes, see TiDB Lightning Backends.

Step 2: Configure data source of TiDB Lightning

This document takes the TiDB-backend as an example. Create the tidb-lightning.toml configuration file and add the following major configurations in the file:

Set the data-source-dir under [mydumper] to the path of the MySQL SQL file.
```
[mydumper]
# Data source directory
data-source-dir = "/data/export"
```
Note
If a corresponding schema already exists in the downstream, set no-schema=true to skip the creation of the schema.

Add the configuration of the target TiDB cluster.

[tidb]
# The target cluster information. Fill in one address of tidb-server.
host = "172.16.31.1"
port = 4000
user = "root"
password = ""

Add the necessary parameter for the backend. This document uses the TiDB-backend mode. Here, "backend" can also be set to "local" or "importer" according to your actual application scenario. For details, refer to Backend Mode.
```
[tikv-importer]
backend = "tidb"
```

Add necessary parameters for importing the TiDB cluster.

[tidb]
host = "{{tidb-host}}"
port = {{tidb-port}}
user = "{{tidb-user}}"
password = "{{tidb-password}}"

For other configurations, see TiDB Lightning Configuration.

Step 3: Run TiDB Lightning to import data

Run TiDB Lightning to start the import operation. If you start TiDB Lightning by using nohup directly in the command line, the program might exit because of the SIGHUP signal. Therefore, it is recommended to write nohup in a script. For example:

# !/bin/bash
nohup ./tidb-lightning -config tidb-lightning.toml > nohup.out &

When the import operation is started, view the progress by the following two ways:

grep the keyword progress in logs, which is updated every 5 minutes by default.
Access the monitoring dashboard. See Monitor TiDB Lightning for details.