"Table doesn't exist in engine" after moving tables from one VPS to another I have two VPS's running right now. One, which I will refer to as the "old" server, runs on Debian 7 and gives this output for mysql --version:

mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.5.44, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 6.2

The other, which I will refer to as the "new" server, is running on a brand new installation of Debian 8, and gives this output:

mysql Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.0.20-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2

I am trying to move my databases &amp; tables from the old server to the new server.  I thought that I could do this by simply copying the /var/lib/mysql/ directory from the old server and overwriting the same directory on the new server. However after doing this, I now receive this error in phpMyAdmin on the new server when I click on any of the tables or databases: 

#1932 - Table 'phpmyadmin.pma__tracking' doesn't exist in engine 

However I can clearly see that it exists:



Is there a solution to this? I'm not sure what I did wrong. Thanks!
You can copy files from one server to the next to move your database. To do this, you must make sure that both instances of your DB are stopped. I also recommend using rsync to copy your database files. In addition to making sure that both database servers are stopped before moving the files, you will most likely need to change the ownership of your files. sudo chown --recursive mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql before starting your new instance. 

There are other options available to move your database. If your database isn't terribly large, mysqldump is probably the most simple. I have attached the documentation for mysqldump below as provided by MariaDB, as you are using MariaDB. 

https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/mysqldump/

Another option to consider, a bit more complex but a little more flexible for size, would be Percona's xtrabackup. 

https://www.percona.com/software/mysql-database/percona-xtrabackup