Automate MySQL Database Backup via Cronjob

Automating a MySQL Database backup in cPanel will take a few minutes of work, but only needs to be set up once.

The backup cron will continue to create backup files until your disk space is completely filled up.
In order to prevent this, you will create a logrotate file as well as another cronjob entry to automatically rotate out the older backups, to keep disk space down.

Create the Backup cron job 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.

date=`date -I`; /usr/bin/mysqldump -uDBUSERNAME -pPASSWORD dbname > /home/CPANELUSERNAME/dbname$date.sql

For Example:

date=`date -I`; /usr/bin/mysqldump -umyusername -pmypassword mydatabase > /home/example/mydatabase_$date.sql

This will create a sql file in your /home/cpanelusername directory with a name similar to mydatabase_20180101.sql.