Do you konw where I can find any logs other than the backup log in Moodle to see if my automated backup process is starting?
I havent gotten it to run yet. I have my Cron job running frequently. Here are my settings: 
Hi Philip,
How do you know that the automated backup process not running?
Are the backup files not appearing at the location you defined for them to be saved?
You could save the output messages from cron into a text file with 2>&1, like so:
/some/path/php /some/path/cron.php >> cron.log 2>&1
Hello,
My directory that I am saving the backup files to is empty. I have permissions wide open on the folder too. Thats a great idea to output the cron messages.
I will give that a shot.
Thank you for your comments.
Best regards,
Phil Templeton
Seems like everything I throw at backups I am still not receiving anything. Nothing writes to a log and output of cron doesn't show that it's hitting the automated course backup script.
I have the cron script running on the root users crontab. Does it have to be specifically run by the www-data user?
Another interesting fact is that on my test server once I ran the automated backups once via CLI the automated backups looked like they would follow the schedule. I might be able to replicate this in my live environment it's just weird that I wouldnt be able to set the settings in the interface and it just runs.
Any additional thoughts?
Thanks,
Phil