[TOP TIP] Daily database backup
For high-end systems, we use clusters, but for small individual servers, it is wise to keep an SQL dump, just in case. So here is a simple and quick cron job, that will keep a daily (or more frequent) backup of your entire mariadb/mysql database, in a highly compressed bzip2 archive:
#minute (0-59)
#| hour (0-23)
#| | day of the month (1-31)
#| | | month of the year (1-12 or Jan-Dec)
#| | | | day of the week (0-6 with 0=Sun or Sun-Sat)
#| | | | | commands
#| | | | | |
8 4 * * * /usr/bin/mysqldump --opt --all-databases | bzip2 > /root/all_databases.sql.bz2
The only requirement for the above command to work, is to have your access credentials in /root/.my.cnf so that mysqldump won't need to ask for a password when running as a cron job. You may also enhance the above command, to keep multiple/separate backups by adding the day of the week in the file name. Now it is easy to make daily copies of the bzip2 archive to a remote system.
Enjoy!