Scheduled Tasks

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Web apps or services sometimes need to periodically run tasks, commands or call up URLs with no user interaction. To manage them you should create a scheduled task.

Our platform is based on Debian and its crontab but allows them to be directly managed from our administration interface - menu Advanced > Scheduled tasks - making their use easier.

Several kinds of information need to be provided:

  • the one or more commands that you wish to run or the URLs you wish to request. Email addresses can also be provided to receive error reports1 (separated by a space).
  • the SSH environment
  • the task frequency: you can specify a fixed time or an interval

Use scheduled tasks

  • If the task is scheduled at a certain frequency but the execution of the previous task is not finished, the current one will be ignored,
  • Tasks are started during the set minute. In other words a task scheduled to start every day at 6:30 will start between 6:30:00 and 6:30:59.
  • A log is created automatically and is available from the $HOME/admin/logs/jobs/ directory. It gives you the start and end of the task.
    • An extract of these logs is presented in the administration’s interface (Logs - 📄).
    • email addresses provided to receive error reports do not replace these logs.

If your script needs to allow some IPs, allow these IP adresses ranges.

Public Cloud users

  • The consumption should remain reasonable. If the scheduled task is major processing, then reduce its frequency.

Private Cloud users

  • Even if it is not advisable, they have also access to the crontab -e command. The two systems are separate.

Troubleshooting

  • source venv/bin/activate && python is specific to Bash and can’t function. To replace by venv/bin/python,
  • Shortcuts with an @ - examples @hourly or @reboot - are not accepted (non-standard syntax).

Examples

WordPress

Every ten minutes, the WordPress tool starts to run the scheduled tasks:

alwaysdata administration interface:

  • value: php $HOME/wordpress/htdocs/wp cron event run --due-now
  • frequency: second choice - Every 10 minutes

Equivalent crontab syntax:

*/10 * * * * php $HOME/wordpress/htdocs/wp cron event run --due-now

tt-rss

Refreshing an RSS backend with TT-rss, every day at 10:30:

alwaysdata administration interface:

  • value: php $HOME/tt-rss/update.php --feeds --quiet
  • frequency: first choice - Every day at 10:30

Equivalent crontab syntax:

30 10 * * * php $HOME/tt-rss/update.php --feeds --quiet

  1. A report is sent when the return code is different from 0. If the task is not executed, no email is sent. ↩︎