Mysql backup

        I have a MariaDB server for my home purposes. Recently it went nuts, so I wanted to restore a last day's state - I make an almost full backup every night.

        I stopped the mysql service, zipped the current contents of the /var/lib/mysql directory (just in case), restored the contents of the directory from a backup, and tried to start the service. It failed, with no meaningful trace in the system log - just an info that something had gone wrong, the mysqld did not appear within 30 seconds, and there was no /var/run/mysql.pid.

        I tried to restore the previous state of the server by unzipping the /var/lib/mysql files back, but the result was exactly the same: the server did not start any more.

        Reboot did not help either.

        How can I fix the situation?

        Thank you very much for your help.

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