Moving Servers/Database Backup Help

[RC Attacker]

I have read the docs on moving vBulletin to another server and I still need some help.

All I want to do is move the threads, posts, and members to the new forum. I don't want to save any Admin CP settings, user groups, user ranks, styles and skins, modifications and hacks, or avatars and profile pictures.

It seems my only way (the only thing I have access to on the original forum) is the Admin CP database backup. When I try to download it to my hard drive I do not know if it is completing because it is a large database.

And when I try to backup the database to a file on the server I get this message: Unable to write backup to file ./forumbackup-07-21-2008-fbf95.sql. This file or the directory this file is in must be world writable! and if I add that file and chmod it 777 it says the file already exists.

All I want to do is move the threads, posts, and members to the new forum. I don't want to save any Admin CP settings, user groups, user ranks, styles and skins, modifications and hacks, or avatars and profile pictures. In order to get only those three things successfully onto my new forum, which tables do I need to select yes to when downloading the database to my computer? And after I do that where do I upload it to on the new forum?

[MoT3rror]

You need to chmod the directory. Also Impex I believe will take care of all the importing when you get the database backup.

[SEOvB]

you will need to be bale to login to the old server via FTP, then chmod the forums directory to 0777

This will make the DB backup right there in the forums directory, then you will need to download that.

Move it to your new server, restore it, and use impex to import the data you wish to import. You can download impex from vbulletin.com/members area

[Dismounted]

Create a full backup of your database:
The only reliable method of backing up and restoring a database is with shell access via telnet or ssh. This is because backing up with a PHP script like that in the Admin CP or phpMyAdmin can result in PHP timeouts errors and an incomplete backup file. Please see the instructions here:

Backup:
http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/maintenance_ssh_backup

Restore:
http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/maintenance_ssh_restore

P.S. If you don't have shell access, some people have also reported success with these scripts:

MySQLDumper:
http://www.mysqldumper.de/en/index.php

MySQLHotxcopy:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=134821&highlight=mysqlhotcopy

Bigdump:
http://www.ozerov.de/bigdump.php
As the posters above have said, you can use ImpEx to import as little as you want.