Automatically Backup MySQL database on linux server

Question

I need a script that automatically makes a backup of a MySql Database. I know there are a lot of posts and scripts out there on this topic already but here is where mine differs

Answer 1

Answer: A cron

Description:

Try creating a file something.sh with this:

 #!/bin/sh
 mysqldump -u root -p pwd --opt db1.sql > /respaldosql/db1.sql
 mysqldump -u root -p pwd --opt db2.sql > /respaldosql/db2.sql
 cd /home/youuser/backupsql/
 tar -zcvf backupsql_$(date +%d%m%y).tgz *.sql
 find -name '*.tgz' -type f -mtime +2 -exec rm -f {} \;

Give the adequate permission to the file

 chmod 700 mysqlrespaldo.sh

or

 sudo chmod 700 something.sh

and then create a cron with

 crontab -e

setting it like

 **0 1 * * *** /home/youruser/coolscripts/something.sh

Remember that the numbers or '*' characters have this structure:

Minutes (range 0-59)
Hours (0-23)
Day of month (1-31)
Month (1-12)
Day of the week (0-6 being 0=Domingo)
Absolute path to script or program to run

Answer 2

After a brief reading the question and the good answers i would add few more points. Some of them are mentioned already.

The backup process can involve next steps:

1. Create a backup
2. Compress the backup file
3. Encrypt the compressed backup
4. Send the backup to a cloud (DropBox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, AmazonS3,...)
5. Get a notification about results
6. Setup a schedule to run the backup process periodically
7. Delete the old backup files

To compound a script to cover all the backup steps you need an effort and knowledge.

I would like to share a link to an article (i'm one of the writers) which describes the most used ways to backup MySQL databases with some details:

1. Bash script

   # Backup storage directory  
   backup_folder=/var/backups
   
   # Notification email address 
   recipient_email=<username@mail.com>
   
   # MySQL user
   user=<user_name>
   
   # MySQL password
   password=<password>
   
   # Number of days to store the backup 
   keep_day=30 
   
   sqlfile=$backup_folder/all-database-$(date +%d-%m-%Y_%H-%M-%S).sql
   zipfile=$backup_folder/all-database-$(date +%d-%m-%Y_%H-%M-%S).zip 
   
   # Create a backup 
   sudo mysqldump -u $user -p$password --all-databases > $sqlfile 
   
   if [ $? == 0 ]; then
      echo 'Sql dump created' 
   else
      echo 'mysqldump return non-zero code' | mailx -s 'No backup was created!' $recipient_email  
      exit 
   fi 
   
   # Compress backup 
   zip $zipfile $sqlfile 
   
   if [ $? == 0 ]; then
      echo 'The backup was successfully compressed' 
   else
      echo 'Error compressing backup' | mailx -s 'Backup was not created!' $recipient_email 
      exit 
   fi 
   
   rm $sqlfile 
   
   echo $zipfile | mailx -s 'Backup was successfully created' $recipient_email 
   
   # Delete old backups 
   find $backupfolder -mtime +$keep_day -delete
   

2. Automysqlbackup

   sudo apt-get install automysqlbackup
   wget https://github.com/sixhop/AutoMySQLBackup/archive/master.zip
   
   mkdir /opt/automysqlbackup
   mv AutoMySQLBackup-master.zip 
   cd /opt/automysqlbackup
   tar -zxvf AutoMySQLBackup-master.zip
   
   ./install.sh
   
   sudo nano /etc/automysqlbackup/automysqlbackup.conf
   
   CONFIG_configfile="/etc/automysqlbackup/automysqlbackup.conf"
   CONFIG_backup_dir='/var/backup/db'
   CONFIG_mysql_dump_username='root'
   CONFIG_mysql_dump_password='my_password'
   CONFIG_mysql_dump_host='localhost'
   CONFIG_db_names=('my_db')
   CONFIG_db_exclude=('information_schema')
   CONFIG_mail_address='mail@google.com'
   CONFIG_rotation_daily=6
   CONFIG_rotation_weekly=35
   CONFIG_rotation_monthly=150
   
   automysqlbackup /etc/automysqlbackup/automysqlbackup.conf
   

3. Third party tools

Hope it would be helpful!

Answer 3

You might consider this Open Source tool, matiri, https://github.com/AAFC-MBB/matiri which is a concurrent mysql backup script with metadata in Sqlite3. Features (more than you were asking for...):

• Multi-Server: Multiple MySQL servers are supported whether they are co-located on the same or separate physical servers.
• Parallel: Each database on the server to be backed up is done separately, in parallel (concurrency settable: default: 3)
• Compressed: Each database backup compressed
• Checksummed: SHA256 of each compressed backup file stored and the archive of all files
• Archived: All database backups tar'ed together into single file
• Recorded: Backup information stored in Sqlite3 database

Full disclosure: original matiri author.

Answer 4

Doing pretty much the same like many people.

1. The script needs to run on the machine hosting the MySql database (It is a linux machine).
   => Create a local bash or perl script (or whatever) "myscript" on this machine "A"

2. The backups must be saved onto the same server that the database is on.
   => in the script "myscript", you can just use mysqldump. From the local backup, you may create a tarball that you send via scp to your remote machine. Finally you can put your backup script into the crontab (crontab -e).

Some hints and functions to get you started as I won't post my entire script, it does not fully do the trick but not far away :

#!/bin/sh
...
MYSQLDUMP="$(which mysqldump)"   
FILE="$LOCAL_TARBALLS/$TARBALL/mysqldump_$db-$SNAPSHOT_DATE.sql"  
$MYSQLDUMP -u $MUSER -h $MHOST -p$MPASS $db > $FILE && $GZIP $GZ_COMPRESSION_LEVEL $FILE   

function create_tarball()
{
local tarball_dir=$1
tar -zpcvf $tarball_dir"_"$SNAPSHOT_DATE".tar.gz" $tarball_dir >/dev/null
return $?
}

function send_tarball()
{
local PROTOCOLE_="2"
local IPV_="4"
local PRESERVE_="p"
local COMPRESSED_="C"
local PORT="-P $DESTINATION_PORT"
local EXECMODE="B"

local SRC=$1
local DESTINATION_DIR=$2
local DESTINATION_HOST=$DESTINATION_USER"@"$DESTINATION_MACHINE":"$DESTINATION_DIR

local COMMAND="scp -$PROTOCOLE_$IPV_$PRESERVE_$COMPRESSED_$EXECMODE $PORT $SRC $DESTINATION_HOST &"

echo "remote copy command: "$COMMAND
[[ $REMOTE_COPY_ACTIVATED = "Yes" ]] && eval $COMMAND

}

Then to delete files older than "date", you can look at man find and focus on the mtime and newer options.

Edit: as said earlier, there is no particular interest in doing a local backup except a temproray file to be able send a tarball easily and delete it when sent.

Answer 5

Create a shell script like the one below:

#!/bin/bash
mysqldump -u username -p'password' dbname > /my_dir/db_$(date+%m-%d-%Y_%H-%M-%S).sql
find /mydir -mtime +10 -type f -delete

Replace username, password and your backup directory(my_dir). Save it in a directory(shell_dir) as filename.sh

Schedule it to run everyday using crontab -e like:

30 8 * * * /shell_dir/filename.sh

This will run everyday at 8:30 AM and backup the database. It also deletes the backup which is older than 10 days. If you don't wanna do that just delete the last line from the script.

Answer 6

You can do most of this with a one-line cronjob set to run every 30 minutes:

mysqldump -u<user> -p<pass> <database> > /path/to/dumps/db.$(date +%a.%H:%M).dump

This will create a database dump every 30 minutes, and every week it'll start overwriting the previous week's dumps.

Then have another cronjob that runs once a week that copies the most recent dump to a separate location where you're keeping snapshots.