I needed an SQL dump of my Global GoldSrc Database to continue work locally. Un-/Fortunately, the server owner and sysadmin is very concerned about server security, so I was unable to just dump the database with this: mysqldump -p -u osaft osaft_gtfcdb4 > osaft_gtfcdb4-20130213.sql The server wouldn’t let me because of insufficient access. mysqldump: Got error: 1044: Access denied for user ‘osaft’@’localhost’ to database ‘osaft_gtfcdb4’ when using LOCK TABLES Fortunately, there’s a simple solution that should work like a charm: –single-transaction. mysqldump -p -u osaft osaft_gtfcdb4 --single-transaction > osaft_gtfcdb4-20130213.sql Then just bzip it (or not) and you’re done! tar -cvjf osaft_gtfcdb4-20130213.