Importing Structure and Data - Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management - page 135

The memory_limit parameter is provided to avoid web server child processes
from grabbing too much of the server memory—phpMyAdmin also runs as a child
process. Thus, the handling of normal file uploads, especially compressed dumps,
can be compromised by giving this parameter a small value. Here, no preferred
value can be recommended—it depends on the size of uploaded data. The memory
limit can also be tuned via the $cfg['MemoryLimit'] parameter in config.inc.php ,
as seen in Chapter 7.
Finally, file uploads must be allowed by setting file_uploads to On . Otherwise,
phpMyAdmin won't even show the Location of the textfile dialog. It would be
useless to display this dialog, because the connection would be refused later by the
PHP component of the web server.
Partial Imports
If the file is too big, there are ways in which we can resolve the situation. If we still
have access to the original data, we could use phpMyAdmin to generate smaller
CSV export files, choosing the Dump n rows starting at record # n dialog. If this is
not possible, we will have to use a text editor to split the file into smaller sections.
Another possibility is to use the upload directory mechanism, which accesses the
directory defined in $cfg['UploadDir'] . This feature is explained later in the
present chapter.
In recent phpMyAdmin versions, the Partial import feature can also solve this file
size problem. By selecting the Allow interrupt… checkbox, the import process will
interrupt itself if it detects it is close to the time limit. We can also specify a number
of queries to skip from the start, in case we successfully imported a number of rows
and wish to continue from that point.
Temporary Directory
On some servers, a security feature called open_basedir can be set up in a way
that impedes the upload mechanism. In this case, or for any other reason when
uploads are problematic, the $cfg['TempDir'] parameter can be set with the
value of a temporary directory—probably a subdirectory of phpMyAdmin's main
directory—into which the web server is allowed to put the uploaded file.