Cron Jobs Not Running Then Running Off And On.. Cron jobs have a problem

Hi ,

It seems that Vyoma and I are the only people trying to use the Cron job service on Gamma..we posted requests back in November about this but it is still a problem..
Last week I went back into cpanel and activated the cron jobs I have running..these crons run a Joomla component that uses RSS to import feeds and publish them on my front page as new items..Also I use cron to "try" to backup my sites..
I know my syntax is correct and it should be running..but it doesnt.."GET http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ >> /dev/null" is the command i try to run..
I tried and tried with different time settings and eventually gave up leaving it to run every 5 mins..
Days later they suddenly started to run again..heres the output email..
"START Feed Gator Import Processing: Sat January 13, 2007, 21:25:05 GMT" then every 5 mins since then its been working and sending me mails to confirm it..
I have changed the time schedule on the cron now to run every hour and I will edit and post up if this works..
Can an admin look at the logs and see what happ to Gamma at that time? my guesss is a reboot, and then try to see why this has been so "off and on" for months now..my guess is the Cpanel upgrade months ago..

Thanks!!

Mark420

Cron job takes a toll on server resources and backing up your account frequently can be seens as risky by server admins.For backing up your account, please perform it perhaps one a week and when you have the least traffic to your site.For executing your script see if you can optimize your steps and perform at the lowest server traffic time--usually around 1am in GMT time.UPDATEI ran 10 cron jobs to backup my account and they all ran without problems. Although I have not received the email notification for them I have to say the cron job is functioning fine.So I will have to go with the answer, "run it during the least busiest hours" to avoid manual termination by server admin. That's the only answer I can think of at this time.Thanks.

Can an admin look at the logs and see what happ to Gamma at that time? my guesss is a reboot

If you log into cPanel, on the left, towards the bottom, you can see the Last reboot. Since it is currently at 2 days 10:25 hours for gamma, I think your guess about a reboot is correct.
~Viz

Sorry but my backup backs up a MySQL db and zips it up and sends it to me..its 61kb big!!So I dont think this is putting a strain on the server..My RSS feed importer should be running once an hour (I set it to 5 min to prove that it doesnt work) and when it runs it imports bytes not kilobytes or megabytes but bytes...its text headlines to news stories and a link..so again I dont think this is putting the server under strain..Also I can still not explain why this cron has been set for months without running then suddenly starts running again after a server reboot.Also I cannot understand why my cron job was deleted from my cpanel when I checked before I went to bed last night..I had to set it up again..Vyoma..you still having probs with your crons???Marky;)

MySQL db and zips it up and sends it to me..its 61kb big!!

The final size may be small, but to perform the execution it takes CPU usage...right? That's what I mean by the server resource. The larger and complex the database may be, the higher CPU usage and memory usage to zip it.
But anyway, that still doesn't explain your cron job disappearing and you had to set it again. And since the last cPanel upgrade few things were back to working, such as "unlimited" value set for sub-domain numbers. So that might hint that during the cpanel upgrade all cron jobs might have been suspended to protect the data.

I am sorry to say if this will be a priority but I will have OpaQue respond to this topic as soon as possible.

Vyoma..you still having probs with your crons???

Ok. I checked it up.
My cron run seems to be running ok now. But this past week, I have seen my Drupal logs, and there are a handful of instances (about 6 or 7) where it reports that the cron run was not completed.

Back when I reported this, the cron just would not respond for weeks together, and all of a sudden work for couple of days, and back to not working. It used to do that back then but now, it seems to run properly most of the times.

Sorry buffalo I should have mentioned that the MySQL backup job only runs once a day at 5am Eurotime.Its the RSS one that runs once an hour.Yes Vyoma the stopping and starting is whats been happ to me since November..when the cpanel was upgraded ;(Still some bugs to be ironed out with it I think l;(

Hopefully OpaQue can shed more light into this situation. Please hold until OpaQue has the chace to reply :)Thanks.

CRONS were always active on GAMMA, no doubt about that.However, on Gamma the PHP rules are a bit strict for security reasons. You were using GET method to call your scripts which are sometimes used for leaching contents of other sites.After a server update, that restriction might have been removed. Its just a tiny issue of security settings being over written.I am happy that your crons are working now :-)Thank You.