Setting up a test server to work on old site

[Exclusif]

Hi,

I'm very new to servers, and so my question is probably as basic as they get.
I've recently put up a local server (physical) with Xampp 1.7.7 for linux. I have Debian installed on the server and it seems to be working fine. I tried creating a test.html file and found it without problems at localhost/test.html.

Now, the purpose of the server is to be a development environment for an old website that's currently live on another server. My question, I guess, is how I copy the website from the other server to this new test server. The website use quite a bit of php. As of now I've just copied the public_html folder with all its content and uploaded it to the test server at lampp/htdocs/. This didn't seem to be enough as I get a simple error message in swedish saying "There was an error" when I go to localhost/public_html/index.php. I've also exported the database as an SQL file (88mb) from the live host and tried to import it with phpMyAdmin, but it keep saying that the file probably is too big, even after I changed the 3 settings suggested (upload file size and so on). Is the database even needed to get the site working in a test environement where only css and html will be worked on? I don't really need the content, but it would be a bonus. As said, im really a newbie at this. Anyway, what am I not doing, or what am I doing wrong? Would very much appreciate some advice since the organization I'm working for really can't afford to hire someone for this.

Thank you.

[JonB]

About the MySQL import -

The easiest way to manage/import/export MySQL databases is MySQL Workbench from Oracle, its free and there are editions for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris (the last may be deprecated/obsolescent). I design MySQL databases, and that is my preferred tool. phpMyAdmin is a good tool also and has a couple features that MySQL Workbench is missing, I use both (and the CLI) The Workbench is a GUI tool that runs on a desktop, but - of course you can connect remotely.

http://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/

The other way is to use the MySQL CLI (Command Line Interface) aka MySQL montior.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/mysql.html

There's a tool just for importing -
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/mysqlimport.html

Its counterpart is 'mysqldump' a tool for backing up/exporting/

Good Luck