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psx
Asked: 2010-03-26 03:09:57 +0800 CST

Escaping a password using mysqldump console

  • 772

I am running a mysqldump via a bash script and have encountered a problem with a password that contains special characters. 

mysqldump -hlocalhost -uUSERNAME -pPA$$W0RD DATABASE | 
                                gzip > /home/USERNAME/backups-mysql/BACKUP.gz

How do I escape the password?

mysql password

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Even better, don't put the username or password on the command line where it can be seen by anyone who can do ps -ef.

    Create a control file named something like /etc/mysqldump.cnf:

    [client]
user=root
password=YOUR_MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD

    ...where client is literal (not the name of your server) and YOUR_MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD is... well... your mysql root password.

    Then invoke like this:

    mysqldump --defaults-file=/etc/mysqldump.cnf DATABASE |                                 gzip > /home/USERNAME/backups-mysql/BACKUP.gz

    Personally my invocation is more like this:

    #!/bin/bash
NOW=`perl -e 'print time;'`
cd /opt/backup/mysql
mkdir $NOW
for i in `echo "show databases" | mysql -u root --password="MySqlRootPassword" | grep -v Database`; do
        mysqldump --defaults-file=/etc/mysqldump.cnf --databases $i --opt > $NOW/$i.dump
one
tar cfpz $NOW.tgz $NOW
du -sh $NOW $NOW/* > $NOW.report
rm -rf $NOW

    I've never figured out how to use a similar --defaults-file parameter for mysql, however since this command runs fairly quickly the risk of exposure is much lower... although really that should be fixed.

    • 5 
  2. mysqldump -hlocalhost -uUSERNAME -p'PA$$W0RD' DATABASE | 
                                gzip > /home/USERNAME/backups-mysql/BACKUP.gz

    It works?

    • 2