Hey David.

I am having to log in twice a day onto phpMyAdmin to clear the cache on a brand new installation.
My original website, Limitless Life Club's autoresponder essentially stopped working - I would have to login in during each run to clear the cache file.

So I got fed up and just made a brand new installation on a new site I am working on.  Its only been on for about 3 months... and the exact same thing happened.  I don't know what to do.  Here is access to the Log File of today's incident.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vY6qUOrA-jCIV6YedVuf2y_4qe9JXdxY

Every morning when I check to see the log file, it says waiting for previous cron job to complete, and when I go here...

Thanks in advance for your help.

Last edited by vmp507 (25-11-2019 06:24:13)

As mentioned previously:

Did you check the responder / server logs?

Well... unfortunately I am not that good at understanding them, so I shared the link in the previous post hoping for some help.

As far as I can tell, (name has been redacted) it was doing the run, and quite in the middle of it, it stopped working.  Below is an excerpt from the follow-up-messages.log

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Logged: 23 November 2019 @ 13:21:03
Action/Info: Preparing to send follow up message to **** *****  (***@****)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Logged: 23 November 2019 @ 13:25:02
Action/Info: System waiting for previous cron job to complete

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

There are no broadcast messages going out.  There are no messages from bounce handlers.  There are no General Errors, Fatal Errors, or MySQLi Errors.  Everything looks like its working... except it isn't... so I check the cache file, and sure enough, some guy is stuck there.  I kill it... and everything starts to work again, until the next batch of messages goes out.

If you tell me what I should be looking for, I will be happy to try it out.

EDIT ********
I dont know if it means anything ... but I just went to check it... and again, a stuck cron job.  Out of curiosity I went into the log file to see when it got stuck
and coincidentally it is with the exact same user it got stuck ith on the entry above, 2 days ago.

Last edited by vmp507 (26-11-2019 07:56:09)

The issue is probably server related, so it's unlikely the responder system will log anything unless it's a fatal error. The cron gets stuck when the loop doesn't complete. Unless the server level logs reveal anything, it's difficult to know where the stop occurs. So, look in your server logs, not the responder logs.

Gotcha.  Here's the catch though - I have NO CLUE where to look or what to look for.  If I get a support plan ... can you track it down for me.  The same problem has now occurred within GoDaddy and Bluehost ... and I have less than 500 subscribers (305 to be exact).  I really need this fixed.  Can you help me out?

LEt me show you an example of the problem this is causing.  Each time I wipe the cron job ... it picks up a batch of people that it has already sent a message to, and sends it again.  Check this out.

[img=FluxBB bbcode q33yuu]https://prnt.sc/q33yuu[/img]
[img=FluxBB bbcode q343i5]https://prnt.sc/q343i5[/img]

I'm surprised they haven't unsubscribed.

Anyhow... please advise as to what my next step is...

Last edited by vmp507 (28-11-2019 03:29:27)

Access to server logs generally requires root access. But I think BlueHost (and maybe GoDaddy) too have an option to view error logs? Did you look in CPanel? I assume it is CPanel you are using?

Do you have a shared hosting plan? Or a dedicated or VPS server?

Of course, this is why the cron locks, to prevent this happening. The first cron hasn't updated its run, so some messages won't get marked correctly. If the cron starts again it sends out the same messages.