Allow remote MySQL/MariaDB access

First, decide which endpoint you will be using. You can see the list here: BackupSheep Endpoints

You will need the endpoint IP address to configure access. Replace the ENDPOINT_IP variable with the IP of your selected endpoint.

Login to SSH and then MySQL (mysql -u root -p).

Execute the following after replacing DATABASE, USERNAME and PASSWORD

For IPv4 (required)

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE.* TO 'USERNAME'@'ENDPOINT_IP' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Open the MySQL configuration file my.cnf in a text editor. In this example, we are using the vim editor:

On CentOS/RHEL-based distributions:

vim /etc/my.cnf

On Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions:

vim /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Comment out following line from

bind-address = 127.0.0.1

to

#bind-address = 127.0.0.1

Restart the MySQL server using one of the commands below. The command depends on the operating system and installed MySQL version:

service mysqld restart
service mysql restart
service mariadb restart

When you have a large MySQL database, then it may experience a timeout issue during backup. If you receive a backup failed notification from BackupSheep, and It mentions timeout then check out the following article.

Important: You can connect databases using the traditional method of allowing access to the database port. However, we strongly recommend you to configure database backups using SSH.