🗄️ Automate MySQL Backups to AWS S3 with a Simple Bash Script
Backups are one of those things you don’t think about… until it’s too late.
I wanted a simple, no-dependency solution for MySQL backups that I could run via cron, store safely on AWS S3, and clean up automatically.
So I wrote a Bash script that does exactly that — checks versions, loads environment variables, dumps the DB, compresses it, uploads to S3, and cleans up afterward.
Here’s the full script and a breakdown of how it works. 👇
💾 Script
#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail
IFS=$'\n\t'
DIRNAME=$(dirname "$0")
TIMESTAMP=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S")
echo "Starting database backup for $TIMESTAMP";
check_versions() {
aws --version
mysqldump --version
}
load_env() {
echo "Loading .env file";
ENV_FILE="$DIRNAME/../.env"
[[ ! -f $ENV_FILE ]] && printf "%s: file not found" "$ENV_FILE" && exit 1
source "$ENV_FILE"
echo "Database name is: $DB_DATABASE"
}
check_variables() {
if [[ ! -v AWS_DB_BACKUP_BUCKET ]]; then
echo "Error: AWS_DB_BACKUP_BUCKET environment variable is not set!"
exit 1;
fi
}
create_dump() {
echo "Creating database dump...";
OUTPUT_FILE="$PWD/$TIMESTAMP-$DB_DATABASE.sql"
mysqldump "$DB_DATABASE" \
--column-statistics=0 \
--no-tablespaces \
--set-gtid-purged=OFF \
--host="$DB_HOST" \
--user="$DB_USERNAME" \
--password="$DB_PASSWORD" > "$OUTPUT_FILE"
echo "$OUTPUT_FILE file created."
du -sh "$OUTPUT_FILE"
}
zip_output_file() {
echo "Compressing target file...";
zip -j -T "$OUTPUT_FILE.zip" "$OUTPUT_FILE"
du -sh "$OUTPUT_FILE.zip"
}
upload_to_s3() {
echo "Uploading zip file to S3 bucket...";
CURRENT_YEAR=$(date +"%Y")
S3_DESTINATION_PATH="s3://$AWS_DB_BACKUP_BUCKET/$CURRENT_YEAR/"
aws s3 cp "$OUTPUT_FILE.zip" "$S3_DESTINATION_PATH"
}
cleanup() {
echo "Removing temp files from local disk";
rm -f "$OUTPUT_FILE.zip"
rm -f "$OUTPUT_FILE"
}
check_versions
load_env
check_variables
create_dump
zip_output_file
upload_to_s3
cleanup
echo "Database backup script finished!"
⚙️ Common Pitfalls / Troubleshooting
Here are a few common issues you might encounter and how to fix them:
🧾 Missing .env file
The script will exit with “file not found.”
✅ Make sure your .env file exists and contains:
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_DATABASE=my_database
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=secret
AWS_DB_BACKUP_BUCKET=my-s3-bucket
🧰 mysqldump: command not found
Install and configure mysql-client
☁️ aws: command not found
Install and configure AWS CLI
That’s it! You now have a simple, reliable, and automated MySQL backup solution using nothing more than Bash and AWS CLI.
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