daily notifications not working

[rbogle]

Folks,

I've got a basic system setup (version 2.0.10) and am testing the functionality before opening up to the public.  So far all is well except for one important area.

Immediate notifications are working, but it seems that daily notifications are not??  I'm assuming it's not email related as the immediate ones are working.  I haven't tried weekly since daily aren't working.

I did some searches on here but didn't see anything discussing this.

Any thoughts?

[Shambles]

When you run the DN schedule manually (ie, "Run Now"), is anything waiting in your email queue?

[rbogle]

Daily and Weekly notifications work when running the "run now" function.  I'll check again but they don't seem to be working automatically?

[rbogle]

OK....manually running daily or weekly notifications (Run Now Function) works fine.  Gathers up the info and sends me an email.  But....if I just "wait" for the notification to occur then I never get an email??

Any ideas?

[Illori]

are those scheduled tasks actually enabled? if they are not they will not run automatically.

[rbogle]

They are enabled

[Shambles]

Does your task log actually show the enabled tasks being executed?

Do the dates & times in the "next due" fields look reasonable?

[rbogle]

Looks like the only time the daily and weekly tasks are running is when I initiate them manually.  The scheduled tasks are definitely enabled and the next due times look appropriate.  For example the Daily Notification Summary is enabled and set to run today at 07:00:00 PM.  There are no log entries for any days at 7pm for any tasks?

[Shambles]

Other than yourself, how much real activity is there on your forum?

... am testing the functionality before opening up to the public.

[rbogle]

I've setup several test users so I can post things as one user and get notifications.

Just trying to get this issue resolved before we announce the forum to the expected userbase or about 1500 people.

[Illori]

the scheduled task only runs if their are hits from users or guests on the forum. if there is very little if none activity then the scheduled tasks may not run when they should.

[rbogle]

Seems to me that the task would run regardless of activity, but I will load in a bunch of test topics and replies from multiple test users and see if the tasks runs.

[Shambles]

Seems to me that the task would run regardless of activity ...

No, that's why I was asking how much activity you had in your prerelease forum.

Clicks through your index are what cause checks for scheduled events. No clicks = no checks.

[rbogle]

Thanks for this info....it's still sounds strange to me???  Why would it matter how many "clicks" there were.  If someone has set their profile for "Daily Notification" and the next day a new topic is created I would certainly expect them to get notified regardless of how much other activity there is on the forum??

But....if that's the way it I'll hope that once the forum becomes more used then the notifications will begin working.

[rbogle]

So....on 3 July using a test user I loaded 6 new topics and several replies and just waiting.  I did not get any notifications and when I checked the logs there were no scheduled tasks run on 3, 4,5 July.  I ran the daily summary with "Run Now" and it immediately sent me the daily summary?

Per Shambles this is expected behavior since there is very little activity on the board?  Strange...but I'll be opening up the board to about 1500 people soon and we'll see what happens then

Thanks for the help

[Illori]

Per Shambles this is expected behavior since there is very little activity on the board?

yes it is expected as the tasks run based on the forum being actively browsed/used

[Steve]

Thanks for this info....it's still sounds strange to me???  Why would it matter how many "clicks" there were.

This is my thought as well. Who determined the number of clicks necessary to trigger scheduled events?

[Shambles]

It's not a number of clicks, in that sense of the word.

There isn't a timed eventing system (like cron) within SMF so the scheduled tasks code has to have some way of determining if it's the right time to fire off jobs. The only way of it doing that is to do a check -  "autotask()" - each time there's activity that executes through index.php... ie, clicks.

[Suki]

The correct term is requests.

The scheduled task are executed whenever there is a request on index.php and/or some other parts of your forum, a request shouldn't have to be via clicks only.  Bots for example, creates requests without the need to click anything. If SMF detects the request is coming from a bot then it "uses" the bot to fire up and execute some scheduled tasks.


A request can be anything, by default SMF uses index.php for pretty much everything, even avatars so if you or some other member uses an SMF server avatar on some other site, everytime that avatar is displayed on that site, it will generate a request on your site, making it run the scheduled tasks.

This act is commonly know as "fake crons" since PHP cannot execute itself it is the only way (without external factors) to run scheduled tasks with some accuracy degree.

You can easily convert the SMF scheduled task system into a proper cron if your host allows executing cronjobs, this way it doesn't matter if your site ever gets requested, the task will be executed.