Question

I have two mysql databases which I would like to sync every couple of hours, I’m aware that my ISP offers cron scripts for this purpose but have no experience with cron can anyone point me to a decent resource for learning cron – I haven’t had much luck searching.

Answer 1

Here is a concise, printable and to the point text document that covers all the basics.

A simple example of what you may be looking to have in your crontab:

15 2 * * * /usr/bin/mysqldump –opt –all-databases -u root -pPASSWORD > /foo/bar/db-`date +%Y-%m-%d`.sql

That job, would run a backup task daily at 2:15 AM.

On a sidenote, if you just need this for regular backing up purposes and not actual duplication, I have come to love this script for quick and dirty db backups.

Good-luck.