Frequent, WHMCS Daily System Cron Attention Needed Emails

[gPowerHost]

Don't waste time searching for a problem that has already been fixed!

 

If your daily WHMCS internal CRON (for daily automated actions) wasn't working correctly--maybe due to the upgrade process falling within the window of when that CRON is to fire--you might start getting more frequent than hourly emails with the subject: "WHMCS Daily System Cron Attention Needed".

 

If you are fairly certain that your setup is actually working try setting: WHMCS->Setup->Automation Settings->Scheduling->Time of Day either permanently or temporarily to the next hour (so, if it is 9:38PM set it to 10PM) wait until 11PM and this may possibly clear up that erroneous, buggy, dunning message that doesn't really check if something is still wrong!

 

If that doesn't do it then you might proceed with what @WHMCS ChrisD suggests here: WHMCS Daily System Cron Attention Needed.

 

We wasted a good bit of time (luckily we had taken a snapshot) unsetting features and trying to divine what was wrong in the complete absence of any detail about what needs attention. There was no detail, as there was no problem, just a buggy WHMCS.

 

Yes, we have reported this as a bug.

[gPowerHost]

Update: in typical fashion, WHMCS will go to great lengths to explain away bugs as features. It would be nice if they took their customers and their customer's time more seriously.

 

Here was their response:

Hello,

 

Thank you for contacting WHMCS support! The e-mail in question is only sent when the cron.php script fails to run at the time that is set for the main daily actions under Setup > Automation Settings and is meant to draw attention as those are the most important tasks it performs (invoice creation, credit card processing, suspensions, terminations, etc) which could result in lost revenue for the day if not dealt with.

 

The e-mail will continue to be sent until someone runs the cron.php script manually with the --force parameter or the next time it runs at the daily configured time. If you choose to not force a run that day, it will keep reminding you until the next successful daily run.

 

If you require further assistance, please don't hesitate to let us know.

 

Best regards,

 

--

Lawrence Williams

Technical Analyst I

WHMCS, Ltd.

http://whmcs.com

 

Blog | Forums | Documentation | Video Tutorials | Feature Requests

 

Why not just provide the solution to stop the erroneous dunning message when the error message is presented (privately, in an email)? Or, why not take 20 minutes and fix the logic and check to see if the error is still present?

 

Additionally, I find this telling:

If you choose to not force a run that day, it will keep reminding you until the next successful daily run.

 

How can I "If you choose to not force a run that day..." when that is some super, top secret thing not worthy of telling the customer in the emails that are flooding in claiming there is a problem that was fixed prior to triggering the alert?

 

Additionally, if WHMCS cared about customers not losing revenue then why would they not admit the bug and add it to the stack to get fixed someday?

 

Lastly, We ran this (as it was the only avenue to fix the issue that we could find):

 

php -q /path/to/cron.php -vvv

 

And that command (presumably with three "v"'s for extra verbosity) provides no hint to the solution. This is a second, not as ideal, place they could have presented the secret solution.

 

To recap: There are two places they could paste in the secret solution. Or, instead of taking 3 minutes to do that they could take the 20 minutes and fix the logic. Either way, the bug needs fixing.

 

Until the bug is fixed folks would need to follow my GUI method to fire the cron or, the "secret method": oops, they only talked about the "--force parameter" am I to assume it is to be added like this:

php -q /path/to/cron.php -vvv --force parameter

. Or what?

[secure1hosting]

Thank you so much for posting this.... Just solved my issue of crons not running properly.

[PDC]

glad to see im not the only one who has to fight dead cron issues weekly. Support has gotten slower and slower. Avg 3 days on non functioning system errors. 4 months now and i'm yet to have 1 full week of a fully functioning whmcs. Even after paying the setup fee to have them do it. lastest 3-4 days