[TYPO3-dev] scheduler script in TYPO3 4.3

[Francois Suter]

Hi Cyrill,

> I'm trying to setup and use the new scheduler in latest TYPO3 release and was 
> looking for the documentation for an admin how to setup the cronjob. 
> The question that came first to my mind was: What frequency should the main 
> cronjob have? I mean if my server cronjob is run just every hour, how can 
> TYPO3 execute task every 5mins? And more important will it notice that its not 
> possible and inform the user?

There's a short discussion about this in the manual. Obviously you need 
to run the cron job at a frequency that makes sense with regards to the 
frequency of the task you want to run.

If you set up your cron job to run every hour, then your tasks are going 
to run also every hour, no matter if you set them up to run every 5 minutes.

The Scheduler does not know at what frequency it is being called by the 
cron daemon, so it cannot warn the user. However if you go to the BE 
module you should see your tasks being nearly always late. That gives an 
indication that the frequency of the cron job is not appropriate with 
regards to what you are trying to achieve.

> Second thing: The script to execute needs an argument "scheduler", which in my 
> opinion could give problems for a lot of users, because often the hosters cron 
> configuration does allow to set a path to script only without arguments. So it 
> might be better and more userfriendly if TYPO3 would come with a single script 
> that just handles the scheduling things. (I know that its actually easy to 
> create another script that calls cli_dispatch.phpsh scheduler, but thats not 
> optimal and i'm having problems on one of my servers to set it up)
> 
> Maybe I should create a bug report for this? What do you think?

The whole point of the cli_dispatch script is to be the central way to 
call TYPO3 from the command line. And the whole point of the Scheduler 
is to have a central place for recurring jobs. So I wouldn't introduce a 
separate script. At least not in the Core. But you could create an 
extension that provides a script encapsulating the call to cli_dispatch.

HTH

-- 

Francois Suter
Cobweb Development Sarl - http://www.cobweb.ch