Are cron jobs setup to run for email notifications from Nextcloud?

[marcusquinn]

I'm testing settings for getting an email when a file is uploaded to a dropbox.

• Test emails work fine.
• User has email filled in
• Settings > Personal > Activity > “A file or folder has been changed” is ticked.
• Push notifications are working.

This thread seems to suggest it was a fixed issue a while ago but relies on the cron setup:

• https://github.com/nextcloud/activity/issues/244

Maybe I'm missing something or all install don't have this setup?

[girish]

@marcusquinn Do you see a log line "==> Run cron job" ? It should run every 5 mins.

[girish]

@marcusquinn Oh it seems the app does not used nextcloud's cron but needs it's own cron via occ activity:send-mails. So that definitely won't work since nobody is running that periodically.

[marcusquinn]

@girish Makes sense, yeah => Run cron job is there.

Yeah, I think there's some decisions to make on what's the best settings. The last comment and link in that GitHub thread would seem like the best option to me:

• https://www.schilljs.com/2017/05/09/better-scheduling-of-activity-emails.html

# crontab -u www-data -e
 0  *  *  *  *    php -f /var/www/nextcloud/occ activity:send-mails hourly
30  7  *  *  *    php -f /var/www/nextcloud/occ activity:send-mails daily
30  7  *  *  MON  php -f /var/www/nextcloud/occ activity:send-mails weekly

Then this looks best for real-time/instant email notifications but I'm not sure if that would create log-litter or what's best-practice in thinking about how it might scale:

* * * * * www-data php /var/www/html/nextcloud/occ activity:send-mails

• https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/stable/admin_manual/configuration_server/background_jobs_configuration.html#cron

[marcusquinn]

Correction, only the in-app/browser notification works, the native Push iOS notification doesn't, so I guess triggered by the same script as the emails would be.

Nextcloud is super-handy as a files dropbox with a non-guessable shared link - just knowing when something's been uploaded to then go and look would be useful, and I'm sure to others now you know it's possible when running.

[girish]

Usually, for "flexible" things like this, we just have the user setup a crontab in the app. These cron timings tend to be fairly opinionated. I wonder why this is needed though, does nextcloud have no way for apps to integrate with the built-in cron they have (like wordpress plugins do?).

[girish]

Actually, https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_server/background_jobs_configuration.html says apps can register to cron.php. Is this an upstream app issue?

[marcusquinn]

@girish Yeah, I read that, and it seems to you setup Cron by default with the email settings anyway at: /settings/admin where the Test email button seems to work, so that part seems good.

Notifications is a core/default App as I understand at: /settings/apps/installed/notifications

This is what I have set here: /settings/user/activity

And the folders are just the default and this extra shared folder: