cron

In a previous post, I walked the user through how to setup a cron job to automatically create a nightly mySQL backup (see http://ejhildreth.com/content/setting-cron-mysql-backups). This is great but has one huge flaw: The database backups keep piling up unless I manually remove them. Since scripting makes the computer work for me, I fired up VIM and created some new shell scripts.

Problem: Having a Drupal site automatically run the cron.php script and automatically backup a mySQL database at regular intervals on a Slicehost slice that is running Ubuntu.

Solution: Shell Scripting and Crontab

Turns out, this wasn't so much of a problem after all and it has a really straightforward solution. Since I am using Ubuntu, it already has cron functionality built into it. To tap into this functionality, it is as easy as editing a text file and telling the system to tun the tasks you want (including shell scripts).

MySQL cron backup step-by-step: