Adjust cron jobs for Mautic... is it possible?

[dsp76]

Hi,
as the standard setup regarding cron jobs is not optimal... how much can I adjust an installation in cloudron without breaking it?

That's the reason and possible solution: https://twentyzen.com/en/think/faq-items/start-mautic-cron-jobs-in-sequence/

So I would need to add an own individual shell script file and call this instead of the individual mautic commands.

[nebulon]

Tried to understand what is written in the linked post, but not sure I am following the necessity of what they mention there.

For refrence in Cloudron the contab for mautic is https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/mautic-app/-/blob/master/crontab.system.template?ref_type=heads

[dsp76]

Thanks for the feedback, will rework this article as the next step.

The reason why this initial Mautic Setup is not used by us and other Mautic Partners: The staggered setting of making sure that the commands run in the right sequence:

• 0,15,30,45 * * * * (echo "==> cron: mautic:segments:update"; sudo -E -u www-data php /app/code/bin/console mautic:segments:update) > /proc/$(cat /var/run/crond.pid)/fd/1 2>&1
• 5,20,35,50 * * * * (echo "==> cron: mautic:campaigns:update"; sudo -E -u www-data php /app/code/bin/console mautic:campaigns:update) > /proc/$(cat /var/run/crond.pid)/fd/1 2>&1
• 10,25,40,55 * * * * (echo "==> cron: mautic:campaigns:trigger"; sudo -E -u www-data php /app/code/bin/console mautic:campaigns:trigger) > /proc/$(cat /var/run/crond.pid)/fd/1 2>&1

With that setup, the Marketing Automation needs at average 12,5 minutes, before a client gets a response from the system. Thats no acceptable, as it negatively impacts response rates and conversion rates. Just imagine, you want to get some information, fill in a form and don't get a response in a timely manner.

We reworked the cronjob setup to concatenate those commands in a shell script and run it - depending on the server speed and the load - every 1-3 minutes.

/PATHTOPHP/php /PATHTOMAUTIC/app/console mautic:segments:update && /PATHTOPHP/php /PATHTOMAUTIC/app/console mautic:campaigns:update & /PATHTOPHP/php /PATHTOMAUTIC/app/console mautic:campaigns:trigger

So in order to achieve that, I need to be able to

• disable the default cloudron cronjobs for mautic (will it be persistent across updates?) and
• run a custom shell script containing those commands instead (will this shell script stay there across updates?).

Hope this clarifies the reason behind it.

[nebulon]

I am no mautic expert, so I can't fully follow this requirement still. However, have you seen https://docs.cloudron.io/apps/mautic/#custom-cron-jobs for custom cron jobs with mautic?

Ideally if this is something all mautic users in the end need (hopefully other can contribute to the discussion here) I guess it would be better to adjust the package cron then.

[girish]

You can edit the /app/data/crontab.system patterns as you wish . See https://docs.cloudron.io/apps/mautic/#system-cron-jobs . I agree that mautic's flow of calling cron for everything is suboptimial. This is why the package made the patterns editable . In fact, for processing any task, the mautic way is to run a cronjob manually.

[dsp76]

Would that mean I can add my custom script (that calls the CLI commands) and add a cronjobs for this?

[girish]

Yes, you can add your custom script that calls CLI comands in https://docs.cloudron.io/apps/mautic/#custom-cron-jobs

[dsp76]

@girish said in Adjust cron jobs for Mautic... is it possible?:

You can edit the /app/data/crontab.system patterns as you wish . See https://docs.cloudron.io/apps/mautic/#system-cron-jobs . I agree that mautic's flow of calling cron for everything is suboptimial. This is why the package made the patterns editable . In fact, for processing any task, the mautic way is to run a cronjob manually.

Will this file stay intact with every Mautic update via cloudron? Because I would then comment them out and completely replace them with custom cron jobs.

[nebulon]

Yes the cronjobs configured via the UI will persist the update. All in all I am still unsure if its now a good or bad idea to provide default cron jobs for mautic or not. Maybe active mautic users could give some more insights on this?

[dsp76]

We have years long experience with mautic

Its important to help with a default cronjob setup. The one from the docs work, but its not optimal. I will help setting it up in a better way together with you, if you like.

For now it would be good, if the out of the box setup for cronjobs in cloudron could also be disabled. I did it by commenting out every line in the crontab.system - but will this be replaced again by an update or not? Its in the /app/data directory. So I think it will not?

I already changed my cronjob setup with a shell file. I trigger this every minute, in case its still running, it will be ignored. I will need to extend it by other optional cronjob tasks - maybe having even two or more scripts. One to run every minute (if server can handle it). And then some maintenance task that don't need to run that often.

#! /bin/sh

# Variables
phpinterpreter="php -d memory_limit=1G"
pathtoconsole="../code/bin/console"
lockfile="/tmp/cronjob.lock"

# Locking mechanism
if [ -f "$lockfile" ]; then
    echo "Script is already running."
    exit
fi
touch "$lockfile"

# Function to execute commands
execute_command() {
    $phpinterpreter $pathtoconsole $1
}

# Execute commands
execute_command "mautic:segments:update --batch-limit=900" \
    && execute_command "mautic:campaigns:rebuild --batch-limit=300" \
    && execute_command "mautic:campaigns:trigger" \
    && execute_command "mautic:broadcasts:send --batch=800" \
    && execute_command "mautic:emails:send --message-limit=790" \
    && execute_command "mautic:unusedip:delete" \
    && execute_command "mautic:import --limit=500" \
    && execute_command "mautic:webhooks:process" \
    && execute_command "mautic:reports:scheduler"

# Unlock the script at the end
rm -f "$lockfile"

Myself I'm not a script or Linux Professional. Probably that approach can be improved.

[dsp76]

For instance - whats the php memory limit on cli? Is it the same limit as for the mautic instance overall?

[girish]

@dsp76 By default, the cli and apache have same php memory limit - 512M . If you change the memory_limit in /app/data/php.ini , it will affect both.

[rmdes]

Any having issues with cron jobs ?

my segments have stopped updating automatically but I haven't touched the crontab.system or crontab.user
neither have I customized anything regarding cron jobs in Mautic

[girish]

Anything in the logs? Which mautic package are you on?