AnyMeal

48 GByte should be enough ;)
I still don't understand what happened though. Let me know if the problem
persists.

# df /var
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 73742752 21393352 48603448 31% /

thanks for the unzip script. i really need to get into shell scripting
more.

http://www.recipesource.com/ is what i was using, they have both
mealmaster and mastercook[chef]

You can get tons of Mealmaster recipes from Glen's MealMaster Archive at
http://thehoseys.com/recipes.html . You need to unzip them though. The
fastest way is to use a for-loop in the shell to do this.
mkdir x
cd x
for i in ../*.zip; do unzip -n $i; done

If you find that a full "/var"-partition is the issue, you could copy the
/var/lib/mysql folder (using "cp" with "-a" option) to a different
partition where there is more space, remove the old mysql-folder and create
a soft-link pointing to the new location. I.e. it is not necessary to
repartition the drive.

yah thats the thing, they were not mealmasters formated so they would not
import. not really an error just an annoyance when trying to suck in as
many recipes as i could find.

ill issue that command later tonight when im off of work

Mealmaster import allows you to ignore errors or write erroneous recipes to
a file. I've tested the AnyMeal import with 300,000 recipes and there
should be no issues with importing recipes.
Another possibility is that your "/var"-folder is full. Can you run "df
/var" (without the apostrophes) to check whether there is disk space
available for the database?

i was having some issues batch importing some individual recipes. so since
i started building this recent database i would import, search for the
recipe, disconnect, close out anymeal and continue with the next recipe.

it is in network mode, youve said debian will not allow anything else

i am not that familiar with the var/lib directory to know if it would be
deleted by the os or not. no commands were ever given to do such things

I don't know what happened. Did you have a working database connection
(importing recipes and then searching and displaying them)? Are you using
the "Network" mode both when creating and reconnecting to the database?
MySQL usually stores the data under "/var/lib/mysql/anymeal". Does your
system delete this information? AnyMeal certainly should not delete any
database tables (such as anymeal.COOKBOOK) unless you use "File->Delete".

thats understood, my question know is what is to stop this from happening
again after i re-load all my 3k worth of recipes? as this database was
created and only accessed by anymeal.

The database wizard will not reuse and existing database if it does not
contain the expected tables already.
You need to delete 'anymeal' using "File->Delete" and then create it again
using the database wizard. I.e. "File->Connect", press "New"-button, and
walk through the setup process.

so, how does the database become empty without deleting entries or the
database?

mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| anymeal |
| mysql |
+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> use anymeal;
Database changed
mysql> show tables;
Empty set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

Can you run "mysql" using your username and password as follows and give me
the output. It sounds as if your database is empty and not initialised.

mysql -u yourusername -p
show databases;
use anymeal;
show tables;