canuckster

I want to set up a cron job that will back up (in human readable form) the data from a particular database table once a month by writing a text file, zipping it, and then attaching the zip file to an email. The part I need help with is the zipping.

From what I understand, I need functions like zip_open() to do this, but I just tried it and it's undefined, suggesting the required library is not installed (or enabled). Is this something I should open up a ticket for? Or is there another way I should be doing this?

Charles

You might want to take a look at this:
PHP: Zip - Manual

If you need something loaded then you would need to open up a support ticket.

percepts

I know you asked about zip but I would suggest you look at using gzip which you can run very simply from php and fast.

example

gzip a a file called var/www/html/sqlbackup/monday

exec("gzip var/www/html/sqlbackup/monday");

would create var/www/html/sqlbackup/monday.gz

.gz files open and decompress in winzip and stuffit on windows.

piece of cake.

__________________
An old dog learning new tricks

canuckster

I'll give that a try. I never knew php could execute scripts that way.

canuckster

It didn't work. I run the script and nothing happens -- no error, no resulting .gz file. At first I thought it might be related to permissions, but they're set to
-rwxr-xr--

Do you know what I'm doing wrong?

Charles

I think you have to have a / in front of the var/www/ part
/var/www/html/........

percepts

Oops, yes there should be a leading slash

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An old dog learning new tricks

canuckster

Actually, I noticed that and wondered the same thing, so I tried it both ways -- with and without the leading slash -- and got the same (non) result ...

desquinn

Should you maybe be specifying the full path to Gzip as well i.e. /bin/gzip

percepts

full path to gzip not required on UH servers but possibly required on windows if you are testing locally.

the directory in which the file to be gzipped is chmod 755. I have a cron which does this and works fine and I just ran a test and it works fine.

It won't work locally on windows unless you have installed gzip. I believe gzip comes with nix OS systems but is certainly on UH servers as standard.

check your httpd error log to see if there are any clues as to failure.

__________________
An old dog learning new tricks

canuckster

It works now.

It was a permissions problem; I'd set Owner and Group to execute, but not Other (I think that was 754 instead of 755).

Thanks for all the help.