What commands would I use to backup a group of files (like a public_html dir and everything below it for example) to my hard drive? Also, what commands to do backup a MySQL DB this way?

Thank you! :D

tar and compress the directory and ftp it home.

with mysql, read this:

http://www.mysql.com/articles/mysql_intro.html#SECTION0007000000

Originally posted by perpetual
tar and compress the directory and ftp it home.

Sorry, but I have pretty much no command line expirience. I need command by command instructions (or a link to them).

try

tar -cz source > anyfilename.tar.gz

and then use ftp to download the newly created file.