hey friends, I am using FC3 with mysql 4.1(downloaded from mysql.com site). I want a script which automatically takes backup of the mysql database.I have one database "dental" and I want to setup a cron job for the database backup . The command given in the script is : mysqldump -u root -p *F298CEE6BE03DAEB0D515166F40879C6DD1D24F3 dental > /var/database/dental.sql If I try to execute the script from the command line it asks for the password where as the password is given in the command in my case the password for root user is *F298CEE6BE03DAEB0D515166F40879C6DD1D24F3" . How can I avoid asking for password .Moreover I can't keep the password without encryption in the script. Is there anyway the script does not asks for the password and the password if given as argument or passed in the script is encrypted ? Encryption is done with the mysql "select password('ankush') ' command. Thanks & Regards Ankush Grover