The following works fine from command line /usr/bin/mysqldump -uUser -pPass Db_name > /var/www/db_backup/db.`date +%Y%m%d%H%M`.sql but when I try to do that in cron, I get the error: bad ` sign errors in crontab file, can't install I saw someone else on the net solve the same problem by escaping the percent signs, but that didn't help and I tried it with just date inside backquotes with no format