I wrote a MySQL database backup script a while back. I known they are more than enough of them already floating around the internet, but hey, I figured I’d share it here anyway.

The script

For the script to work, you’ll need to edit a few variable to match your configuration.

• BACKUPDIR is the path of the directory where you want your backups to be stored.
• BACKUPUSR is the user that will connect to MySQL to dump the databases. It should have access to all you databases without needing a password.
• EXCLUDELIST is a list of databases that should not be backed-up. Leaving it as is is probably fine.

#!/bin/bash

BACKUPDIR="/home/user/backup"
BACKUPUSR="user"
EXCLUDELIST="^Databases$|^information_schema$|^mysql$|^performance_schema$"

sqlbk() {
  for each in $(mysqlshow | awk '/[[:alnum:]]/{print $2}'); do
    if [[ $each =~ $EXCLUDELIST ]]; then
      true
    else
      mysqldump $each | bzip2 > ${BACKUPDIR}/${each}.sql.bz2
      chown ${BACKUPUSR}: ${BACKUPDIR}/${each}.sql.bz2 && chmod 600 ${BACKUPDIR}/${each}.sql.bz2
    fi
  done
}

[[ -e /etc/init.d/mysql ]] && sqlbk

I personnaly have this script running once a week, in my user’s personnal crontab (editable using the crontab -e command) :

## WEEKLY DATABASE BACKUP
@weekly /home/user/bin/backupdb

Conclusion

You’ve probably noticed that the script erases the previous backup when a new one is made.

I don’t need to keep multiple versions of the same database backup on my servers because they are all saved remotely on a daily basis using Rsnapshot. I’ll probably write an article on the subject in the future.

As usual, feedback is always appreciated !