Is Super Cron compatible with Cron MT?

We haven't built support for it but the idea is certainly exciting.

Hi.

I am the author of the Cron MT module. I am a big fan of Super Cron with all the additional features, and I would be willing to merge the Process Control aspect into Super Cron. The downside is that the Process Control extension is Linux only, but maybe there could be an option so admins could choose which type of multi-threading they want. Please let me know if this is something you want to pursue.

~Chris

Chris: This would be absolutely fantastic. Do you think there could be a way to use auto-detection to see if Linux is installed, the extension is available and useable so as to avoid configuration ?

Absolutely. It is fairly simple to test if the server is running on a unix-like system. The kicker is that PCNTL can only be used when running PHP via CLI, which is one of the reasons why Super Cron is more accessible than Cron MT. If you take a look at hook_requirements in Cron MT, you will see that I have to call a small script via exec() to test if the process exists.

My plan is this...

I want to strip out the PCNTL functionality of Cron MT and create a pure API module. This way the API will test that PCNTL is available and will expose that information in a function. All you would have to do is call the function to make sure PCNLT is available and use it as necessary. I think this may be the best way forward so other modules can use this functionality as well. I am starting to see interest in PCNTL with the wider acceptance of Drush.

Your thoughts on this are most welcome.

~Chris

I think that this would not only be awesome for SuperCron but would also be extremely useful for D7 if it is generalized somehow. Right now the D7 team seems to consider the idea of a task queue; by combining your method and mine we may be able to convert that queue into a more complete task list manager once the D6 work is done.

#542592: Platform Independent MT
Make MT cross platform, although its semi ghetto and really doesn't allow for IPC. This would be the fall-back method. It's setup for boost and it's page crawler, but it could be setup to run cron. Only thing is each thread takes about 5 seconds to start on windows, less the a second on linux; so it's performance benefit is geared toward long processes. Once the thread is started, killing and restarting is fairly quick. I do this to avoid php timeouts & cpu timouts (most shared hosting has this, which is what boost is geared towards).

Subscribing.

I was just wondering about it and I'm very glad to see this.

Subscribing.

Haven't forgot about this. I've been super busy with the Search Lucene API suite of modules. I do promise to get to this. I am also willing to support anyone who wants to help out or take the lead on this.

Thanks,
Chris

Fantastic; this is off topic but there are two topics dealing with Cron jobs that I could find in the SF DrupalCon line-up; one is ours and another is by another Cronhead. If you guys are interested in seeing both discussions (either live or on video) could you pls. vote for them:

http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/dealing-long-cron-jobs (with Phil Glatz)
http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/speedfreak-make-your-site-s... (with yours truly)

I would also love to see this module work with Cron MT. Subscribing.

Me to - keep up the momentum guys!

subscribing

Hmmm, I'm more interested in a basic module or core update -even in D6 as it will take a year before all my modules are available in D7- that handles multi-threading and multi-cores and multi-tasking (or whatever...).

Then the cron would be additional upon that, in this concept?

I'm just wondering to buy a super-server: http://wi-ca.org/Server_configuration , but I'm not sure if its possible to takes enough advantage of all that power. Maybe I should just get an old fashioned 2P x1 thread server first and swap for a multi-... in 1-2 years?

Marking as closed as this module is abandoned.