Visvanath Ratnaweera

Hi

You said:
> I know I *shouldn't* have to run cron manually - but I've run the URL out of curiosity.

Who told you that? In fact in newer Moodle versions it is advised to run cron.php every _minute_! Read below in the same thread: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=311710#p1247764. (There are locking mechanisms looking after already running cron.php.)

> When I run cron manually (/admin/cron.php) I find that it has LOADS of tasks and takes a long time. Today I noticed it sending posts that I sent in Course News yesterday. I though that the regular Moodle cron would have sent them.

Correct. That why the question whether you are sure that the cron.php is called. Could you describe how you've set it and how do you know it is running.

> If manually running cron seems to take a long time (eg 5 mins if don't run for a day, 20 mins if I don't run for a week) - I think that there must be something wrong with the automatic/background Moodle cron. Am I (probably) correct?

Partly. It is also possible that something is wrong with your server (or how it is set up).

You can do a control experiment with running cron.php on the command line: https://docs.moodle.org/en/Cron#Working_out_the_Moodle_cron_command.

P.S. You have hijacked a thread. I gave the question a different Subj. Hope the moderator would split the sub-thread.

Oops, sorry for that! Gave you a good karma in exchange!

(Just kidding, the Useful ratings was done before that.)

> I am not so sure. Friends don't track every private thing with a vengeance.

Ha, ha, ha! Well said Steve!

(Unfortunately not a laughing matter, and especially the moodle.org community has the stand "everybody googles".)

I also took very long to realize and then immediately backed down. There must be dozens of wikis in the meantime, each needing log in anew. (Details are in the "Moodle community sites" forum.)

+1 to
> * mark thread as solved

This comes up every other year. Apparently low priority for the moodle.org programmers.

P.S. I wonder whether we should shift to the "Moodle community sites" forum.