Sometime you want to backup a table and all its contents in MySQL Database and then you might want to restore or copy the table to different MySQL database.
To do this you need to dump the table first and then restore to the target database.
Assume you have two database, db01 and db02. Inside the db01, there are table01 and table02 whereas inside the db02 there are table03 and table04.
In this example you want to copy table01 in db01 to the db02. Here are the steps:

1. Dump table01 using mysqldump command and save as table01.sql

$ mysqldump -u root -p db01 table01 > table01.sql
Enter password:

You will get a file table01.sql generated by the command above.

2. Restore or copy the table01.sql to db02 database using command below:

$ mysql -u root -p db02 < table01.sql
Enter password:

Verify that the table01 has been copied to the db02.

$ mysql -uroot -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 207886
Server version: 5.0.67 Source distribution
 
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
 
mysql> use db02;
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A
 
Database changed
mysql> show tables;
+-----------------------+
| Tables_in_db02        |
+-----------------------+
| table01               |
| table03               |
| table04               |
+-----------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
 
mysql>

In some cases you might want to change or reset MySQL root password.
To do this there are two ways, using mysqladmin command or using UPDATE sql command.

1. Using mysqladmin command.
Login to the server where the MySQL database is installed. From the current shell run mysqladmin command below:

$ mysqladmin -u root -pcurrentpassword password 'newpassword'

Note that between the option ‘-p’ and the ‘currentpassword’ must be without any space.
For the ‘-u’ option and ‘root’ it can be with or without space. And also the ‘newpassword’, it can be with or withour single quote.
So the following two commands will just work.

$ mysqladmin -uroot -pcurrentpassword password 'newpassword'

or

$ mysqladmin -uroot -pcurrentpassword password newpassword

Verify that you can login to the MySQL using the newpassword.

$ mysql -uroot -p
Enter password: <enter the newpassword here>
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 207702
Server version: 5.0.67 Source distribution
 
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
 
mysql>

2. Using UPDATE SQL command
Using this method you have to login first to MySQL using existing root password. On the mysql command prompt, run the following command below to change the MySQL root password.

mysql> UPDATE user SET password=PASSWORD('newpassword') WHERE user='root';
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Rows matched: 1  Changed: 1  Warnings: 0

Again verify that you can login using the newpassword.

$ mysql -uroot -pnewpassword
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 207736
Server version: 5.0.67 Source distribution
 
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
 
mysql>

This tutorial will show you on how to install MySQL server from source distribution. I use Slackware for this tutorial but it should be application in other Linux distros (Centos, Ubuntu, Redhat, Fedora, Debian, etc) and BSDs varian (FreeBSD, PC-BSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD).

Basically the explanation on how to install MySQL is already explained the INSTALL-* files included in the source file. This tutorial is only a quick step and straightforward way because if you are a newbie you will take some times to read the INSTALL-* files.

First download the MySQL source here. At the time this tutorial written, the latest stable version of MySQL is 5.1.37.

Untar, configure and then compile the source. We will install it in /usr/local/mysql5 folder as the target.

Here are the complete steps:

$ tar zxf mysql-5.1.37.tar.gz
$ cd mysql-5.1.37
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql5 --mandir=/usr/local/man
$ make
$ sudo make install
 
# groupadd mysql
# useradd -g mysql -s /bin/false -c 'MySQL Database' mysql
 
# cd /usr/local/mysql5
# chown -R mysql .
# chgrp -R mysql .
# ./bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
# chown -R root .
# chown -R mysql var
# ./bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

Check the MySQL service is now running and LISTEN on 3306 port.

# netstat -atp|grep mysql
tcp        0      0 *:3306    *:*    LISTEN    23767/mysqld

Do not forget to set the root password for MySQL (not system root password) by firing the command below:

# /usr/local/mysql5/bin/mysqladmin -u root password yourpassword

Now you can try to log in to the MySQL server by issuing the command below:

$ /usr/local/mysql5/bin/mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 5
Server version: 5.1.37 Source distribution
 
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
 
mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql              |
| test               |
+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
 
mysql>