Here's a handy BASH script I wrote to pull down one copy of a database to a local version using an SSH tunnel. It's not super-secure, so it kind of assume that you have the script hosted on a local machine, securely (the DB password is in the script!).

First, go put a host named "tunnel" in your hosts file (usually /etc/hosts on *nix-type environments), that points to localhost 127.0.0.1 (mysql can get cranky when you try to connect to "localhost" - it always tries to use a local socket when you say that, so this is a bit of a workaround to make it work through the tunnel.

The script is below, just put it somewhere in your path and chmod it +x. (If you don't want to put it in your path, like in /usr/bin, just put it in your home folder and run the script from within that folder or by fully qualifying its path.

It uses your home folder as a temporary area (that's what ~ is), but feel free to change the paths. Invoke the script by passing it the remote db name you want to copy, like "dbmigrate.sh somedb" if you named the script dbmigrate.sh).

Of course, replace the necessary credentials, users, hosts (all in CAPS) with the correct values for your configuration. Happy migrating!