How Do I Backup My PostgreSQL Database with Cron?

Question

I can run commands like vacuumdb, pg_dump, and psql just fine in a script if I preface them like so:

/usr/bin/sudo -u postgres /usr/bin/pg_dump -Fc mydatabase &g         


        

Answer 1

you probably have "ident" authentication in your pg_hba.conf for your postgres user. The option "-u postgres" fails when that is the case. either change user to postgres in your backup script or configure a different authentication method.

Answer 2

Your environment variable are maybe not set in cron.

In your normal session, you probably have defined these variables:

PG_PORT
PG_HOST
PG_DATABASE
PG_USERNAME
PG_PASSWORD

Add an "env" into yout script.