Cron Job Setup

bedrock
1

Hi - I’ve a bit of a blind spot when it comes to cron setup and I’m having some issues with a client site where scheduled posts are not posting.

I understand that WP_cron is disabled by default and that crontab should be setup with
*/5 * * * * curl http://example.com/wp/wp-cron.php
(run the cronjob every 5 mins)

However - using trellis how does one go about actually setting up crontab/ cronjobs?
Is it something that should be setup as part of the ansible tasks?

or do I just add a crontab file(somewhere)?

In roles/wordpress-setup/tasks/main.yaml there is:

    - name: Setup WP system cron
      cron:
        name: "{{ item.key }} WordPress cron"
        minute: "*/15"
        user: "{{ web_user }}"
        job: "curl -k -s {{ site_env.wp_siteurl }}/wp-cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1"
        cron_file: "wordpress-{{ item.key | replace('.', '_') }}"
      with_dict: "{{ wordpress_sites }}"
      when: site_env.disable_wp_cron and not item.value.multisite.enabled | default(false)

Does this just setup the default wp-cron? (which is disabled by default?)
or
does that task actually ping the wordpress cron every 15mins?

any pointers or walkthroughs on how to set up basic cron with trellis/ bedrock would be great!!

2

Trellis handles WP cron by default when disable_wp_cron is enabled (default), although there’s currently a bug with it:

3

Thanks. I did think so…

Note: this can’t be merged yet because the --due-now feature is not in the last WP-CLI release so we’re waiting on the next one.

Any indications of how long the wait might be for the release?

4

No, but you can edit the cron job roles/wordpress-setup/tasks/main.yaml to have the URL of your WP site in the meantime

1 Like
5

Still having some cron issues reported so just to hold my hand a little here: I’m changing

- name: Setup WP system cron
  cron:
    name: "{{ item.key }} WordPress cron"
    minute: "*/15"
    user: "{{ web_user }}"
    job: "curl -k -s {{ site_env.wp_siteurl }}/wp-cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1"
    cron_file: "wordpress-{{ item.key | replace('.', '_') }}"
  with_dict: "{{ wordpress_sites }}"
  when: site_env.disable_wp_cron and not item.value.multisite.enabled | default(false)

to:

- name: Setup WP system cron
  cron:
    name: "{{ item.key }} WordPress cron"
    minute: "*/15"
    user: "{{ web_user }}"
    job: "curl -k -s mysiteurl.com/wp/wp-cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1"
    cron_file: "wordpress-{{ item.key | replace('.', '_') }}"
  with_dict: "{{ wordpress_sites }}"
  when: site_env.disable_wp_cron and not item.value.multisite.enabled | default(false)

so changing this line:
job: "curl -k -s mysiteurl.com/wp/wp-cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1"

then reprovision server

6

Hi @chrisk2020 … I tried doing this and reprovision the server.
The flie /etc/cron.d/wordpress_domain_com did changed into this

#Ansible: domain.com WordPress cron */15 * * * * web cd /srv/www/domain.com/current && wp cron event run --due-now > /dev/null 2>&1

But Mailgun is still logging this

Retry limit reached. Dropped: root@mg.domain.com → web@mg.domain.com 'Cron <web@server> cd /srv/www/domain.com/current && wp cron event run --due-now' MX lookup failed

with details json format (truncated)

"message": {
    "headers": {
      "to": "web",
      "message-id": "20160825083006.82493.45993.675EBA03@mg.domain.com",
      "from": "root (Cron Daemon)",
      "subject": "Cron <web@server> cd /srv/www/domain.com/current && wp cron event run --due-now"
    },

The Ansible script now is like this

- name: Setup WP system cron
  cron:
    name: "{{ item.key }} WordPress cron"
    minute: "*/15"
    user: "{{ web_user }}"
    job: "cd {{ www_root }}/{{ item.key }}/{{ item.value.current_path | default('current') }} && wp cron event run --due-now > /dev/null 2>&1"
    cron_file: "wordpress-{{ item.key | replace('.', '_') }}"
  with_dict: "{{ wordpress_sites }}"
  when: site_env.disable_wp_cron and not item.value.multisite.enabled | default(false)

Thanks for your help!

7

Sorry - I don’t think I ever actually got this resolved - maybe someone else wants to step in? - (I’ve not checked to see if the commit mentioned by @ben has been merged yet)

8

I see… alright thanks @chrisk2020 …

9

I have a multi-site setup on a digital ocean droplet. One of the sites is set with a lot of scheduled posts but they’re not being published, instead they eventually receive the “missed schedule” notice.

My MailGun logs are showing the cron jobs being accepted:

{
"tags": null,
"envelope": {
	"sender": "root@mg.project.com",
	"transport": "smtp",
	"targets": "web@mg.project.com"
},
"storage": {
	"url": "https://se.api.mailgun.net/v3/domains/mg.project.com/messages/AgEFdhOLEztpFnyRqe9NNYSTo9040AkDZA==",
	"key": "AgEFdhOLEztpFnyRqe9NNYSTo9040AkDZA=="
},
"log-level": "info",
"method": "SMTP",
"user-variables": {},
"flags": {
	"is-authenticated": true,
	"is-test-mode": false
},
"recipient-domain": "mg.project.com",
"timestamp": 1604082605.30419,
"id": "eFFLh3drRy-HRRuO1wedpg",
"message": {
	"headers": {
		"to": "web",
		"message-id": "20201030183005.fb9702090570592c@mg.project.com",
		"from": "root (Cron Daemon)",
		"subject": "Cron <web@project> cd /srv/www/project.com/current && wp site list --field=url | xargs -n1 -I % wp --url=% cron event run --due-now > /dev/null 2>&1"
	},
	"size": 669
},
"recipient": "web@mg.project.com",
"event": "accepted"

}

The timestamps in MailGun logs are every 30 minutes and each one says they’ve been accepted. That seems about right based on the settings in roles/wordpress-setup/tasks/main.yml

- name: Setup WP Multisite system cron
  cron:
name: "{{ item.key }} WordPress network cron"
minute: "{{ item.value.cron_interval_multisite | default('*/30') }}"
user: "{{ web_user }}"
job: "cd {{ www_root }}/{{ item.key }}/{{ item.value.current_path | default('current') }} && wp site list --field=url | xargs -n1 -I \\% wp --url=\\% cron event run --due-now > /dev/null 2>&1"
cron_file: "wordpress-multisite-{{ item.key | replace('.', '_') }}"
state: "{{ (cron_enabled and item.value.multisite.enabled) | ternary('present', 'absent') }}"
  with_dict: "{{ wordpress_sites }}"

Does anyone know where I can go from here to get these published? Thanks much!

10

Hmm, I just noticed this comes up in the MailGun logs quick view tab… not sure what deal is with this.

image
image1778×178 74.7 KB

12

Ideally I’d like to have posts get published at the exact minute they’re scheduled to publish.

13

I went forward and updated main.yml to adjust the multisite minutes from 30 to 1 minute. MailGun is showing an accepted cron job every minute now but the posts are still showing that they missed their schedule.

image
image1292×1710 192 KB

14

This may be relevant to your setup: