Currently the MySQL data files *.ISM and *.ISD are architecture dependent. If you want to move your applications to another architecture you should use mysqldump.
mysqldump will (by default) create a file full of SQL statements which you can then transfer to the other machine and then feed as input to the mysqld server.
Try mysqldump --help to check what options you can use.
The easist way (not the fastest) way to move a database between two connected machines are running this on the machine where the databases are:
mysqladmin -h 'other hostname' create database mysqldump --quick --drop database | mysql -h 'other hostname' database
You can also store the result on file (compressed in this example):
mysqldump --quick databasename | gzip > databasename.contents.gz # transfer the contents files to the target machine and use this # on the target machine mysqladmin create databasename gunzip < databasename.contents.gz | mysql databasename
You can also use mysqldump and mysqlimport to do this: (This is much faster than simply using mysqldump for big tables)
mkdir full-path-to-some_dir mysqldump --tab=full-path-to-some-dir database # transfer the contents files to the target machine and use this # on the target machine mysqladmin create database cat full-path-to-some_dir/*.sql | mysql database mysqlimport database some_dir/*.txt
Don't forget to also copy the 'mysql' database. You may have to use the MySQL user "root" on the new machine until you've got the mysql database in place.
Finally (or straight after you import the 'mysql' database) do a :
mysqladmin reload on the new machine.
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.