MySQL backup script

dom111 — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 08:45:30 +0000

I’ve recently been learning more and more about bash scripting and the cool functions and features that are included, that i’ll probably never use…

I recently had to set up a cron to backup all MySQL databases but I didn’t want them in one huge file.

So I’ve written a little script, that is probably not entirely efficient, but serves it’s purpose for us:

#!/bin/bash
 
# get todays date
DATE=`date +"%F"`;
 
# go to the backup directory
cd /var/backup/mysql
 
# export the databases, each to it's own file
#
# the first echo is sent to mysql, so we're basically echoing SHOW DATABASES; to mysql
# then we're chopping off the first line (sed 1d) and passing the remaining input to
# xargs which accepts \n or space delimited arguments as a list and echo's out the
# string mysqldump -u  -p % > %.sql (replacing % with the name) to
# /bin/bash
#
echo "SHOW DATABASES;" | mysql -u <username> -p<password> | sed 1d | xargs --replace=% echo "mysqldump -u  -p % > %.sql" | /bin/bash
 
# compress the backups
tar czf mysql_backup_$DATE.tar.gz *.sql
 
# remove the large .sql files
rm *.sql

This was tested on a SuSE 11 server, might need some tweaking on other dists.

dom111.co.uk » backup

MySQL backup script