Fedora

I'm using fedora 5 and sql 5.0. I'm trying to edit the crontab to perform automatic backups of my database. For some reason it isn't working. Here is what I have so far.

15 2 * * * /usr/bin/mysqldump -opt -all-databases u root -ppassword -h localhost /home/ruth/backup/alldb_`date`+%m-%d-%Y``.sql


Can anyone explain to me why this isn't working. I've looked in the crontab logs but it doesn't show anything.

Use single quotes around the date format instead of back ticks:

Code:

15 2 * * * /usr/bin/mysqldump -opt -all-databases u root -ppassword -h localhost /home/ruth/backup/alldb_`date '+%m-%d-%Y'`.sql

In addition to the type of quotes, the "%" character is special to cron (it means "newline"). All the "%" characters need quoting as "\%".

You will be better putting long commands into a script file and executing that from cron. This also gives you somewhere to set the environment for your commands.

Can you point me to a good reference that describes how to get scripts to work with cron. I haven't found one that works yet. I know you make a file usin vi editor but getting cron to execute it well thats a bit tricky.

Hello randerson21.

This below link is a par-for-the-course response

https://www.unix.com/answers-frequent...n-crontab.html

If you have specific issues that are not addressed in the link, or any of the other information to which it refers, please post them here.

Regards.

I'm still trying to get the auto backup to work. I'm in the shell prompt and I've typed

crontab -e 11 05 * * * mysqldump -u ruth -ppassword -h localhost world > /home/ruth/backup/world_try

Unix keeps complaining out the options for password. It says invalid option --p usage error unrecognized option. What do I do about this? I tired the above options with crontab -e and it would also complain about the date. I like the idea of putting a date in my file name but can't get it to work so I've simplified it a little. Please help everthing I read and try does not work.

mysqldump -u sadmin -p pass21 Customers > custback.sql

why u dont put this in bash script and run it with debug option ( bash -x script.sh )?