So this is more of a theoretical question (will be put into practice if this is possible).

I'm working with Plesk and a Virtual Private Server. They have the option to do a re-install (in case things get too broken or what have you). I'd like to be able to access the old database (it's called psa and would be located in /old/var/lib/mysql/psa) via the mysql command to get data from there.

Is it possible to do this? I was thinking of using a socket, but since the mysql service would be started from the new installation, would the old installation even have a socket?

I *do not* want to copy the database over to the new folder for several reasons. The first is that it's an InnoDB and I think I'd have to also copy over the ibdata stuff. More importantly, there is a fresh copy of the psa database that would be created and I DO NOT want to overwrite this.

Please let me know if anyone has any ideas.

Thank you!