Here's a quick and dirty way of automatically backing up your Sybase database. Personally, we save a dump for each day of the week.
Ensure that you have permissions to write to the destination directory.
Create the SQL script
#vi /home/esofthub/dump.sql
1>use master
2>go
1>dump database databasename to '/raid/sybdumps/dump.dat'
2>go
:wq! (saves and quits vi)
Create the shell script
#vi /home/esofthub/dump.sh
#!/usr/bin/sh
isql -U login -P password -e < /home/esofthub/dump.sql > dump.out
:wq! (saves and quits vi)
Add entry to the crontab
#crontab -e
0 5 * * * /home/esofthub/dump.sh
:wq! (saves and quits vi)
This crontab entry invokes the dump.sh script every day at 0500.