1. SSH to the server using your favourite CLI.
2. switch to a superuser
   # sudo su # cd /var/lib/mysql
3. dump from live database to an actual .sql file
   # mysqldump live_database > live_database.sql
4. change the URL in the database
   # sed -i 's/livedomain.com/stagingdomain.com/g' ./live_database.sql
5. Import the modified dump to the staging database
   # mysql staging_database < ./live_database.sql
6. remove the dump file
   # rm live_database.sql

If you see the message: “Please login as the user “centos” rather than the user “root”  we need to allow root access via SSH.

• Login as the user “centos”:
  # ssh -i PrivateKey.pem centos@Floating-IP-Address
• Change to root:
  # sudo -s
• Edit the file “/root/.ssh/authorized_keys”
  # vi /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
  and keep it only contains the key  (starts with “sh-rsa”) without the restrictions that exist at the begining of the file.
• Open the sshd_config # vi/etc/ssh/sshd_config
  and uncomment the line “PermitRootLogin yes”
• Restart SSH daemon:
  # systemctl restart sshd

Now you can SSH as root to your instance, high five!