[X-Unix] Rsync, mysqldump and cron-job help needed - part1

[Rad Craig]

OK, I need help on several items.  Sorry I'm n00b and you have my  
humble apologies for the eleventy-billion questions I'm about to  
ask.  I have a bunch of questions and have tried to provide as much  
info as possible.  I have the overall idea, just need some help  
filling in the blanks and putting it all together into a working  
solution.  Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at  
it), rsync is very flexible and somewhat complex (to me), so there  
are many flags/options that I'm trying to learn or find out if I need  
them.  Again, I apologize for so many questions, your help will be  
greatly appreciated.  I have had to break this message into multiple  
parts to get it posted.

I have a webhost where our website, forums, picture gallery and mail  
server (POP/SMTP/IMAP) are housed.  I make a full backup every week,  
and keep 6 weeks worth.  After the backup has been created, I have  
just FTP'd the archive to a machine at my shop where I keep the other  
archives.  A few months ago, our data exceeded 2GB, so I can no  
longer FTP the backup.  I have been SFTPing the archives, but while  
that archive is on our server, until its fully transferred to the  
shop machine, then deleted, we are very close to, or exceeding our  
disk quota and it always makes our email server act funny because of  
this.  I have over 1GB worth of IMAP email in my account alone.  So  
I'm looking for a solution.

The webhost runs Linux.  MySQL is 4.1.13-standard, Bash is 2.05b,  
rsync is v2.6.2.  My shop machine is running OSX.4.2 and also bash.   
I just now ssh'd into my webhost to see what version of rsync they  
were running and I typed rsync and hit enter, at the bottom, after it  
scrolled the help information, it has an error:  rsync error: syntax  
or usage error (code 1) at main.c(991)

Is that just because I typed rsync and hit enter with no parms or is  
there some other problem I need to address first?

My backup philosophy is to have a full, complete, backup of data and  
databases with the ability to roll it back several weeks, in case of  
a virus infection, so that if needed, I could roll it back to before  
the server was infected.  This is what I'm trying to accomplish with  
all of this, safety/redundancy.

The recommendations I have gotten so far is to use scp or rsync.  I  
believe with scp I'd still have to do it like I have been, making the  
archive, then copying it across, and deleting it afterwards, so its  
still taking up space until its fully copied, so I guess rsync will  
be the best solution.  If there is a better/easier solution, I'm all  
ears.

The problem is that I know VERY little about Unix, so I'm having  
trouble putting it all together for mysql dumps, cron jobs and rsync  
commands.  I'm very comfortable with computers (More with MS, getting  
better with OSX), just haven't done much UNIX stuff yet...but I'm  
working on it.  While I'm thinking about it, is there a good OSX Unix- 
type book out there, where I can learn about the Unix side of OSX and  
scripting?

I've numbered the main questions I need help or direction with below.

I have ssh turned on at my webhost server as well as on my box at the  
shop that I'm downloading everything onto.  I'm not really sure about  
how this will all work together.  I've read the man pages, but still  
am unsure about a few things.  I believe I need to setup a cron job  
to make mysql dump(s), then another cron job to start rsync to backup  
most of my directory structure, then a last cron job to delete the  
mysql dumps.

1.) What is the command to get mysql to dump properly so that I can  
restore it if needed and have it all work correctly.  I know that  
some types of dumps or backups don't restore correctly.  I just  
looked in the help file for my forums, and it had a little blurb on  
doing this via ssh.  The command they recommended was:
mysqldump --opt -uUSERNAME -p DATABASENAME > /path/to/dump.sql

Where USERNAME is my username used to access the database,  
DATABASENAME (there are 5 different db's I need to back up) is self  
explanitory, then the path where I want the file placed and its name.

2.) I have some other databases in there that will also need to be  
backed up, besides our forums, one is a picture gallery, one is for a  
shopping cart that I don't have fully setup yet, etc.  So I guess I'd  
just do multiple mysqldump commands?

3.) How can I change the filename to be dynamic, like to include the  
date and database name?  Are there some variables I can use in the  
filename?  I want to name it for whatever database it is, and have  
the date included in the filename.  I'd like something like:
     db-dump_%dbname%_%date%.sql.

4.) If you could, give me an example of the mysqldump command with  
the info I've provided, I think I've listed all the information you  
would need.  I think I'm close with that, I just want some confirmation.

::: continued in next email :::