SQL Backup Script produces empty files

[adastra]

I'm trying to produce a backup script to use with cron jobs, so I have a daily backup of my database send to me via e-mail. I've looked at various scripts and came up with this, but somehow the script always produces either empty sql files or zips with empty files without file extensions. I'm not a PHP wiz, so could someone help me out with this script?

$databases = array('mydatabase');
foreach ($databases as $dbname) {
	$backupFile = $tmpDir.$dbname."_".date("Y-m-d-H-i").'.gz';
	$command = "mysqldump --opt -h localhost -u $dbname -p $dbpass $dbname | gzip > $backupFile";
	passthru($command);



$file_size = filesize($backupFile);
$handle = fopen($backupFile, "r");
$content = fread($handle, $file_size);
fclose($handle);
$content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));
$uid = md5(uniqid(time()));

$header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$header .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"".$uid."\"\r\n\r\n";
$header .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\r\n";
$header .= "--".$uid."\r\n";
$header .= "Content-type:text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$header .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\n\r\n";
$header .= $message."\r\n\r\n";
$header .= "--".$uid."\r\n";
$header .= "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"".$backupFile."\"\r\n"; 
$header .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n";
$header .= "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$backupFile."\"\r\n\r\n";
$header .= $content."\r\n\r\n";
$header .= "--".$uid."--";


	if (mail($recipient,$subject,$message,$headers)) {
		echo "Success!";
	} else {
		echo "Error!";
	}

}

[mykg4orce]

well i would start here:

$backupFile = $tmpDir.$dbname."_".date("Y-m-d-H-i").'.gz';
$command = "mysqldump --opt -h localhost -u $dbname -p $dbpass $dbname | gzip > $backupFile";
passthru($command);

run that script on its own...and then open the file that has been created. If the file was created properly and has data in it then the problem lies somewhere else.

[kakki]

maybe a shell-script like this will do the job as well

#!/bin/bash
mysqldump --user=xxx --password=yyy --host=zzz -DtheDatabase > /tmp/backup.sql
cat /tmp/backup.sql | mail [e-mail]
rm /tmp/backup.sql