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How To Set Up A Cron Job To Do A MySQL Database Backup


This article is for cPanel Accounts. Determine where your account is with this guide.

To do a backup of your database through a cron job, you can set this up in cPanel. Navigate to cPanel >> Advanced >> Cron Jobs.

You can select the backup frequency that you need and then enter the command to backup. Here is a sample cron job:

0 0 * * 0 date=`date -I`; /usr/bin/mysqldump -uDBUSERNAME -pPASSWORD dbname > /home/CPANELUSERNAME/FILE_NAME_HOME_DIRECTORY$date.sql

This cron job will do a backup of the database every Sunday at midnight. Then it will save the backup with the current date appended to the file name.

A few notes:

-uDBUSERNAME – there should be no space between -u and DBUSERNAME, DBUSERNAME is the username of the database you are trying to backup.

-pPASSWORD – there should be no space between -p and PASSWORD, PASSWORD is the password of the database user.

dbname – this is the name of your database.

/home/CPANEL_USERNAME/BACKUP_NAME$date.sql – cpanelusername is your username to log into cpanel, and this will save the backup in your home directory (you can change it to whatever directory you want). You can call the backup whatever you wish but adding $date at the end will append the date to that backup.

This is not something that WestHost helps to customize, but if you have questions about how cron works or your MySQL databases, please contact Support.


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