Passwordless mysqldump via shell script in /etc/cron.daily

I'm aware that there are dozens of questions similar to this, but it seems none has a definitive answer to my problem, so that's why I'm posting this... I hope in the right place. **The problem**: I have a script placed in /etc/cron.daily that performs a daily database backup among the other things. It works fine as long as there is a password hardcoded into the script for the mysqldump command. #!/bin/sh $ mysqldump -u [uname] -p[pass] db_name > db_backup.sql However, not wanting to have the password in the script, I've set up ~/.my.cnf file (chmod 600) with my user's password stored there so the mysqldump command in the script would be passwordless. ~/.my.cnf [mysqldump] password="pass" -------------------- #!/bin/sh $ mysqldump -u [uname] db_name > db_backup.sql When I run this new script manually from the command line as root it works like a charm. sudo sh /etc/cron.daily/daily-backup-script But when cron wants to run it it's unable to dump the database giving the following error: mysqldump: Got error: 1045: Access denied for user 'user'@'localhost' (using password: NO) when trying to connect. So, I assume cron doesn't have appropriate privilege to perform the passwordless mysqldymp command in the script, with password placed in ~/.my.cnf, however the script and the passwordless mysqldump command IN IT are working flawlessly from the command line with sudo. **Effort so far:** 1. I've tried sudo in front of the mysqldump command in the script. 2. I've tried sudo -u user in front of the mysqldump command in the script. 3. I've chown-ed the ~/.my.cnf file as root:root.