How-to resolve “mysqldump: Got error: 1049: Unknown database“ errors during the WHM backup

Introduction

This article aims to provide step-by-step instructions on resolving the following type of error during WHM backups:

The backup process encountered the following error: The backup process on “hostname.example.server” encountered an error. 
[2020-12-10 02:25:26 -0600] mysqldump: Got error: 1049: Unknown database ‘example_database’ when selecting the database

Procedure

This error most often indicates that the related database exists in a cPanel user's database map, but the database does not exist in MySQL.

You will need to check whether the database exists within MySQL. You can accomplish this by running the following command as the root user via SSH:

mysql -e "show databases;" | grep example_database

Replace example_database with the database found within the backup error in the backup logs. You can find the backup logs within /usr/local/cpanel/logs/cpbackup.

If the above command does not display any results, it indicates that the database does not exist in MySQL.

In order to correct the backup errors, you would need to go through and remove all of the databases that do not actually exist in MySQL via cPanel > MySQL Databases.