Giving chrooted user access to mysqldump

[sciguy]

I have a chrooted ftp user that I use on my server. I would like to run a cron job using this user that backs up my mySQL databases. When I execute the job, it complains about date and mysqldump not existing. I was able to fix the date problem simply by copying it from the actual /bin to the chrooted /bin. However, I can't simply copy mysqldump because it depends on several libraries. Anybody know how I can give this chrooted user access to commands that aren't in his chroot?

[ScallioXTX]

Chrooting the user in FTP does not chroot it on your entire server does it?
Try to put the whole path to mysqldump in your cron job (if you haven't done so already) and see if this works.

If this doesn't work you could

• make a symlink to mysqldump in the users chroot /bin
• mount --bind the directory mysqldump is in to the users chroot is in (not recommended, need to run this command every server reboot or add it to /etc/fstab)

[sciguy]

thanks for the advice. For security reasons, the user is completely chrooted. Even when logged in via ssh. So symlinking isn't working, and I would prefer not to mount. Perhaps I'll just make another user to do this...

[sciguy]

Ok, I ended up making a seperate user for this purpose, and it works fine. Howevever, I now have another issue. I've made a cron job in plesk, but nothing happens...I get no notification, and nothing gets written to my log file. The files are setup so that only my new user has execute permissions, and the cron is being run under that user. Ideas on why this would happen?

[sciguy]

the commands work fine when I run them under the same user from the command line, so why wouldn't they work via a cron job?

[SariJ]

Try su as that same user and run the commands from shell ?

[sciguy]

I'm not certain I understand what you mean. I already can run the commands fine from shell as that user without granting su.