Cron job for Archimedes

What is Cron?

A Cron job (Cron as in “Chronos”, God of time) can perform a certain task in a certain interval.
Cron is a Unix/Linux program, the Windows equivalent for a Cron Job is called Windows Task Scheduler.

What does the Cron Job do?

We recommend to run a Cron job every day to keep Archimedes running smooth, for example 5AM every night.
The cron job performs a couple of tasks, like:

  • deleting old log files
  • refresh caches
  • removing expired users
  • sending invoices for subscriptions each month
  • etc

Create a Cron Job on Windows

To create the Cron job:

Create a task in Task Scheduler (guide for Task Scheduler).
This task is the following:

curl [url]

You can find the url by logging in to the Archimedes admin panel:
Go to “settings” (menu), “maintenance” (tab), “Cron job” (heading)

Example:
curl http://localhost/archimedes/admin-2389dj3/cronjob.php?id=zcsamjH3tyss2uj2jh2jkhqwhjkedh2j2mmctg2gppC7N
(the exact url is different in every situation)

Create a Cron Job on Linux

In the terminal use the following command

crontab -e

then enter

0 5 * * * wget [url]

This executes the cron job at 5:00 AM every night.

You can find the url by logging in to the Archimedes admin panel:
Go to “settings” (menu), “maintenance” (tab), “Cron job” (heading)

Example:
0 5 * * * wget http://localhost/archimedes/admin-2389dj3/cronjob.php?id=zcsamjH3tyss2uj2jh2jkhqwhjkedh2j2mmctg2gppC7N
(the exact url is different in every situation)

When Cron job fails

When running a Archimides Cron job, it blocks other Cron jobs from running for security and persistence reasons.
It can happen that a Cron job fails for unexpected reasons, this will prevent other Cron jobs from running in the future.
To unblock the Cron Job:

  • Open your config file located on the webserver, called “application_[xxx]” (on Windows XAMPP this is probably: c:\xampp\archimedes\config\)
  • set the variable: APP_CRONJOB_ISEXECUTING to false
  • Save the config file
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