Automate MySQL Database Backup via Cronjob

Automating a MySQL Database backup in cPanel is a two step process.

Create the cron entry in cPanel

You will need to know your Database username and database password in order to configure the backup.

1) Log into your cPanel
2) Go to Advanced -> Cron Jobs
3) Enter the email you wish to email the results of the cron job to.
4) Scroll down a bit, and either select a common setting (Once a day, once a week, etc) from the drop down. or enter a custom entry for days, weeks, months, etc.
5) For the command to run, enter the following command. Replace CPANELUSERNAME with your cpanel username. Replace DBUSERNAME with your database username. Replace PASSWORD with the database password, and CPANELUSERNAME with your cPanel username.
<syntaxhighlight lang="bash"> date=`date -I`; /usr/bin/mysqldump -uDBUSERNAME -pPASSWORD dbname > /home/CPANELUSERNAME/FILE_NAME_HOME_DIRECTORY$date.sql </syntaxhighlight>


As an example, the cPanel user is example, Database username is myusername, database name is mydatabase, password is mypassword. The command to enter into the cron entry is <syntaxhighlight lang="bash"> date=`date -I`; /usr/bin/mysqldump -umyusername -pmypassword mydatabase > /home/example/FILE_NAME_HOME_DIRECTORY$date.sql </syntaxhighlight>