Cron backup help

[arumdevil]

Hi guys, hope this is the right place to post this....

I am relatively new to ZC and cronjobs too, and php for that matter. I found a nice php script that compresses the database files and emails them to a specified address. I have uploaded the script and it works by typing the URL path of the script into a browser - the script is then executed and I receive a backup file to the email address I specified.

The problem is when I setup a cronjob through my hosts cPanel - the cronjob goes off at 3am everymorning but it returns an error:

/home/noahsark/public_html/directory/email_backup.php: line 1: ?: No such file or directory
/home/noahsark/public_html/directory/email_backup.php: line 2: syntax error near unexpected token `('
/home/noahsark/public_html/directory/email_backup.php: line 2: `$datestamp = date("Y-m-d");      // Current date to append to filename of backup file in format of YYYY-MM-DD'

it can obviously see the script file as it is quoting particular lines but I don't know why it wont work, can anyone shed any light for me? (the file has permissions set to 755 as specified where I got the script from).



here is the script:

<?
$datestamp = date("Y-m-d");      // Current date to append to filename of backup file in format of YYYY-MM-DD

/* CONFIGURE THE FOLLOWING SEVEN VARIABLES TO MATCH YOUR SETUP */
$dbuser = "username";            // Database username
$dbpwd = "password";            // Database password
$dbname = "--all-databases";            // Database name. Use --all-databases if you have more than one
$filename= "backup_noahsark_all_databases-$datestamp.sql.gz";   // The name (and optionally path) of the dump file
$to = "[email protected]";      // Email address to send dump file to
$from = "[email protected]";      // Email address message will show as coming from.
$subject = "MySQL backup file";      // Subject of email

$command = "mysqldump -u $dbuser --password=$dbpwd $dbname | gzip > $filename";
$result = passthru($command);

$attachmentname = array_pop(explode("/", $filename));   // If a path was included, strip it out for the attachment name

$message = "Compressed database backup file $attachmentname attached.";
$mime_boundary = "<<<:" . md5(time());
$data = chunk_split(base64_encode(implode("", file($filename))));

$headers = "From: $from\r\n";
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: multipart/mixed;\r\n";
$headers .= " boundary=\"".$mime_boundary."\"\r\n";

$content = "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\r\n\r\n";
$content.= "--".$mime_boundary."\r\n";
$content.= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\r\n";
$content.= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\n\r\n";
$content.= $message."\r\n";
$content.= "--".$mime_boundary."\r\n";
$content.= "Content-Disposition: attachment;\r\n";
$content.= "Content-Type: application/x-gzip; name=\"$attachmentname\"\r\n";
$content.= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n\r\n";
$content.= $data."\r\n";
$content.= "--" . $mime_boundary . "\r\n";

mail($to, $subject, $content, $headers);

unlink($filename);   //delete the backup file from the server
?>

[DrByte]

You probably can't run the PHP file directly.
Try prefixing it with the path to the php binary so that it knows to treat the script as a php file.

[samad64]

I have the same script on my server.. i use the following command:

php -f '/path/to/script'

and run it every 15 minutes. Yes.. it may seem like overkill.. but i would rather have a backup of 10 minutes ago than 10 hours ago if for some reason my site was to go down

[arumdevil]

ah, mine didn't have the ''s in... I'll try that. or did you use them for illustrative purposes... ?

[arumdevil]

thanks samad64, that got it working, was pulling my hair out there trying to get it working, so many thanks!

[samad64]

thanks samad64, that got it working, was pulling my hair out there trying to get it working, so many thanks!

no problem :)

[webgaffer]

thanks samad64, that got it working, was pulling my hair out there trying to get it working, so many thanks!

I am using the same script but it can't access the database. Where did you put the script on your host?

[arumdevil]

php -f '/home/yourserver/public_html/folder/email_backup.php' > /dev/null

that is the command I have, it is in a folder of the public folder of my site, but really you should have it above the public_html folder so others can't get to it......

[webgaffer]

Thanks for your help...
I had a typo in the database username so that's why it didn't work.
Also I moved the script from public folder, along with the currencyupdate script to above public_html for security. Both scripts are working fine. Currencies and Backup update on the hour every hour. Wonderful!