Scheduled Posts

sola_darren 2017-04-11 21:20:19 UTC #1

[IMPORTANT, please fill the questions]

Application name and version:
- Bitnami WP 4.7.2 from Amazon Marketplace
Is it an installer, cloud image or virtual machine?:
- VM on EC2
Operative system/Platform (Linux, Windows, OSX)(x86/x64):
- Ubuntu on AWS
Was it installed as the root user?
- Installed from Amazon Marketplace, so I assume yes
Is there anything you've done and/or tried with the application before posting here?
E.g. changed permissions or installed a plugin:
- Set DISABLE_WP_CRON, true in wp_config.php
- Added this line to crontab:
- 0 * * * * su daemon -s /bin/sh -c "cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php"
- When I run ps aux | grep cron I see:
  bitnami@ip-10-0-5-137:~$ ps aux | grep cron root 15193 0.0 0.0 4440 648 ? Ss 20:00 0:00 /bin/sh -c su daemon -s /bin/sh -c "cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php" root 15195 0.0 0.1 64524 1740 ? S 20:00 0:00 su daemon -s /bin/sh -c cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php daemon 15197 0.0 0.0 4440 648 ? Ss 20:00 0:00 sh -c cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php daemon 15198 1.2 11.0 231608 112352 ? S 20:00 1:00 /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php.bin -q wp-cron.php

However, scheduled posts in WP are not executing I just see "Missed Schedule X minutes ago"

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much -- you guys do great work!
-Darren

We assume you are using Bitnami to deploy your application.
Describe here your question/suggestion/issue and how to reproduce it.

marcos 2017-04-12 13:05:47 UTC #2

Hi @sola_darren,

I would recommend you to execute the commands you added to your Crontab to see if they have any issue.

In any case, it seems your command is the following:

su daemon -s /bin/sh -c cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php

Shouldn't it be like this instead?

su daemon -s /bin/sh -c "cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php"

Also, you could try to check your Apache error logs for any clues: https://docs.bitnami.com/aws/components/apache/#how-to-debug-apache-errors

I hope it helps!

sola_darren 2017-04-12 15:09:21 UTC #3

I do have the command wrapped in quotes as you can see from the grep.

I reran everything again today (here's a snap from crontab -l):
# m h dom mon dow command 0 * * * * su daemon -s /bin/sh -c "cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php"

And now today - I do not see anything when I run ps aux | grep cron:
bitnami@ip-10-0-5-137:~$ ps aux | grep cron root 16317 0.0 0.0 23648 892 ? Ss 15:05 0:00 cron bitnami 16333 0.0 0.0 11740 928 pts/0 S+ 15:07 0:00 grep --color=auto cron bitnami@ip-10-0-5-137:~$

I've tried stopping/restarting cron, but no luck.

Should I try putting the command under /etc/crontab?

Thanks again for helping!
-Darren

sola_darren 2017-04-12 21:17:32 UTC #4

Another update...I checked the server later & it appears to now be running.

bitnami@ip-10-0-14-183:~$ ps aux | grep cron root 13140 0.0 0.0 23648 888 ? Ss 19:28 0:00 cron root 13241 0.0 0.0 4440 652 ? Ss 21:00 0:00 /bin/sh -c su daemon -s /bin/sh -c "cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php" root 13242 0.0 0.1 64524 1736 ? S 21:00 0:00 su daemon -s /bin/sh -c cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php daemon 13243 0.0 0.0 4440 648 ? Ss 21:00 0:00 sh -c cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php daemon 13244 0.6 5.6 183604 57824 ? S 21:00 0:05 /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php.bin -q wp-cron.php bitnami 13324 0.0 0.0 11740 932 pts/0 S+ 21:15 0:00 grep --color=auto cron bitnami@ip-10-0-14-183:~$

However, I checked all of my server(s) & am not seeing anything in the access.log or error.log.

I assume I would not see anything because it's not making a GET request, right? So, are we all good now?
-Darren

marcos 2017-04-13 10:08:15 UTC #5

Hi @sola_darren,

You are right, nothing should appear on your error logs since Apache is not serving as a front-end in this case.

If you wanted to log the outputs, you could do something like this:

/bin/sh -c su daemon -s /bin/sh -c "cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php" >> /tmp/wordpress_cron_logs.txt

sola_darren 2017-04-17 20:58:46 UTC #6

Thanks marcos.

I'm still not having any luck getting the Scheduled Posts working. I added the additional lines to log output, however, I'm not seeing cron running again when I run:
ps aux | grep cron

I restarted cron, but no luck:
bitnami@ip-10-0-14-183:/tmp$ ps aux | grep cron root 13140 0.0 0.0 23648 920 ? Ss Apr12 0:00 cron bitnami 26557 0.0 0.0 11740 928 pts/0 S+ 20:53 0:00 grep --color=autocron
bitnami@ip-10-0-14-183:/tmp$ sudo restart cron cron start/running, process 26561 bitnami@ip-10-0-14-183:/tmp$ ps aux | grep cron root 26561 0.0 0.0 23648 888 ? Ss 20:54 0:00 cron bitnami 26564 0.0 0.0 11740 932 pts/0 S+ 20:57 0:00 grep --color=autocron

Any assistance here would be great. Scheduled posts is mission critical for this site.

Thank you.
-Darren

marcos 2017-04-18 14:03:26 UTC #7

Hi,

Please note that cron executions may be quick to execute, so they will not appear with ps aux unless they are currently being executed. According to your crontab, that happens once every hour, at minute 0. Maybe this post is helpful for you: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16407750/how-often-you-do-this-in-a-cron-0

My recommendation is for you to take a look at the log files you wrote, /tmp/wordpress_cron_logs.txt, maybe you find anything strange.

sola_darren 2017-04-18 14:57:56 UTC #8

Thanks marcos.

I had not realized it was running every hour. I changed it to every 10 minutes.
bitnami@ip-10-0-14-183:~$ ps aux | grep cron

root 26568 0.0 0.0 23648 924 ? Ss Apr17 0:00 cron root 28295 0.0 0.0 4440 652 ? Ss 14:50 0:00 /bin/sh -c su daemon -s /bin/sh -c "cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php" >> /tmp/wordpress_cron_logs.txt root 28296 0.0 0.1 64524 1740 ? S 14:50 0:00 su daemon -s /bin/sh -c cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php daemon 28297 0.0 0.0 4440 652 ? Ss 14:50 0:00 sh -c cd /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/; /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php -q wp-cron.php daemon 28298 4.1 4.6 172956 46792 ? S 14:50 0:00 /opt/bitnami/php/bin/php.bin -q wp-cron.php bitnami 28304 0.0 0.0 11740 932 pts/0 S+ 14:50 0:00 grep --color=auto cron

It's running now & the log is empty, so I think we are good.

Do you have a recommendation for how often to run the wp-cron.php? This site uses scheduled posts quite a bit, so I wanted to make sure that it executes in a timely manner, but doesn't cause performance problems.

Let me know,
-Darren

marcos 2017-04-19 09:41:09 UTC #9

Hi @sola_darren,

I don't think the promotion job makes use of too many resources, so as long as it is each 10 minutes or more, I think you're fine. In this case it depends more on how often you want this to detect scheduled posts than on the resource usage.

Wordpress jobs queued up but server cron is actually running it

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