How to restore MySQL data/setup?

[Wallaby]

I'm looking for some advice restoring the MySQL setup and databases from a backup after a total operating system restore (following a file system corruption).

OS is RedHat 9 (original was 7.3 though). MySQL is 4.x, as the original was.

Here's what I have from a backup (not a CPanel backup, done by another backup script):

1) An .sql dump file for each "user" database.

2) A mysql.sql dump file with what looks like the "system" database, user etc info.

3) A database.sql dump file containing only:

-- MySQL dump 9.09
--
-- Host: localhost Database: Database
---------------------------------------------------------
-- Server version 4.0.15-standard

My questions are:

a) How best to go about restoring the MySQL system info and databases without danger of a screwup.

b) What order should I restore things in? "User" data first, or the mysql.sql?

c) Do I need the database.sql file?

I'm ok with how to import a dump file using:

mysql -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD newdbname < /path/to/dump.sql

but AFAIK the database must have been created first?

Any advice very welcome!

[Wallaby]

No pearls of wisdom then?

If anyone's interested, here's what I did:

1. Created a new databse called newmysql.

2. Imported the sql dump file mysql.sql into this database:

mysql -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD newmysql < /path/to/mysql.sql

3. Stopped mysql, then copied the (newly created) files from the newmysql database directory into the /var/lib/mysql/mysql directory.

4. Restarted mysql.

This got me the usernames and passwords back.

For the individual databases I created each one (mysql at the shell prompt and then CREATE DATABASE databasename; ). Then imported the dump file using the command in 2 above with the relevant database name etc.

This seems to have worked fine. There is probably a much easier way, but the job got done.