Okay, me again. I don't want to be secretive, so here's my solution for my situation. You may find this useful.
My cronjobs: (I have a lot of cronjobs and have used comments to visually structure the crontab file. What you see is only a part.)
############################################ # delete # all backups older than 30 days # each night at 3:00 # 0 3 * * * find /path/to/your/webspace/website_folder/protected_folder/ backups -ctime +30 -exec rm -f {} ; # ############################################ # write # a database backup # each night at 3:20 # 20 3 * * * /path/to/your/webspace/website_folder/protected_folder/ cronjob_subfolder/dailydump.sh ############################################
The file "dailydump.sh":
#!/bin/sh DATENAME=`date +%Y%m%d` BASENAME="/path/to/your/webspace/website_folder/protected_folder/backups/ db_${DATENAME}.sql" /usr/bin/mysqldump -hdatabaseserver -udatabaseuser -pdatabasepassword databasename > ${BASENAME}
I hope the mail program does not break the lines. Each of the two cron instruction is one line, and the .sh file consists of four lines. And please note "-h" (for "host"), "-u" and "-p" in front of the host address, username and password _without_ space!
Adapt and enjoy!