windows 7 task schedule / mysqldump

Question

I've created a batch file to create a dump of a database and save it in a file with the current date as part of the file name. The batch file works brilliantly and all the data is saved correctly.

I've now tried to set up a scheduled task to do this weekly, but I've run into a problem: although the task runs, the file it creates is empty, as if it has not pulled any data from the remote database. I know it's pretty vague, but can anybody tell where I'd start looking for a reason/solution?

** EDIT **

Right, more progress - looks like it might be a path problem I've put a pause in the batch file, and when run through the task scheduler, it says:'mysqldump is not a recognized program'. However when run through the command line on my user account it works fine; just to confirm, I've set it run on the same user account I've been testing it on.

** EDIT 2 **

I've found a sort of solution: I've had to refer the mysqldump application by its absolute path. However I still can't understand why it can find mysqldump from the path when run directly from the command line, but not when automated through the task scheduler.

Answer 1

Maybe the network was unavailable ? You could try scheduling it to run every 5/10 minutes, and see if the commands / variables are going correct. You sure that the script runs correctly when run as a whole and not just single command at a time ?

---

On your edit 2: Seems like mysqldump is not present in the PATH environment variables. Try adding that, and try again.

Answer 2

Have you tried running mysqldump (in your scheduled task) in verbose mode? (--verbose)

Also, perhaps look at what user your task is running as, make sure that user has permissions to run mysqldump and create a file in the target directory.

Answer 3

1. If giving absolute path solved your problem, it is not possible to create empty file. Instead no file created with windows scheduler log shows job successful.

2. Your script might works on command line, if path variable holds the path information to mysqldump.exe. Check it by giving "path" command to command line.

3. For your reference here is sample batch file I've used for mysql backup.

@echo off
SET DB_USER_ID=[id]  
SET DB_USER_PASS=[password]
SET DATABASE=[database name]
SET EXP_PATH=[backup path]
SET EXP_TMP_PATH=[temp path]
SET FILE_NAME=[backup filename]
For /f "tokens=1-3 delims=- " %%a in ('date /t') do (set today=%%a-%%b-%%c)

del /S /Q %EXP_PATH%
md %EXP_PATH%
md %EXP_TMP_PATH%

C:\Bitnami\redmine-2.5.2-0\mysql\bin\mysqldump.exe -u%DB_USER_ID% -p%DB_USER_PASS% %DATABASE% > %EXP_TMP_PATH%\%FILE_NAME%_%today%.sql
move %EXP_TMP_PATH%\%FILE_NAME%_%today%.sql %EXP_PATH%\%FILE_NAME%_%today%.sql