Scheduler problem for both posts and back up

I am running a Multisite Installation, running Atahualpa on one site (the main domain for the multisite), been running it for years.
The other domain runs Twenty Twelve and that is the default theme.
I use Bluehost.

My posts went up as scheduled today so I’m having no problem with the same themes, same plugins and WP 3.4.2

Funny thing about Multisite, the main site’s theme can impact a lot :/

Sarah, have you ever had to edit your cron.php or had any other scheduling problems before?

No. I have never had any scheduler problems up to the 3.5 update.
And even now, once I reverted to 3.4 (without changing anything else), everything is working fine.
Thanks for your time.

Hi Mika – all of our sites are on the same server as we’re using a multi-user install as well. We have one site that’s hosted on the same server but which is on a separate WP install. Am checking to see if its scheduler also is failing.

sorry the the delay in response.

@ipstenu – I write software for a living (outside of managing a bunch of WP sites), so I do understand how incredibly frustrating debugging issues are when you cant replicate them. That said, if someone is having an issue, they are having the issue regardless of whether you can replicate it or not. This is especially true if more than one person reports the exact same issue.

Now, having said all of that, we need to start looking for commonalities between the setups of those who are experiencing the issue. To answer your question @ipstenu, yes, all of these sites are on the same “server” (3 virtualized servers behind a physical load balancer, all attached to NFS). And I too am beginning to wonder if the root of the problem lies with this configuration. When I cloned one of the sites over to our development server (a single non-load-balanced server), there were zero issues with the scheduler. Even if I changed the timeout in cron.php back to the default of 0.1 it worked correctly.

I’ve had this issue with both single site installs as well as multi-site (all housed on the same collection of servers). All of our themes are custom-built.

@sarah974, do you know any specifics on how your bluehost server is configured?

@doug Hardy, can you give any specifics on your server configuration?

will do – colleague Lon Seidman will chime in

gilzow,

I’m Doug’s business partner. We’re running a network installation using domain mapping on a media temple grid server. Beyond that it’s a fairly vanilla installation. I’ve seen domain mapping do some funky things in the past so perhaps that could be an issue?

I’m also noticing that the cron jobs are taking up an excessive amount of ‘gpu’ cycles (a measurement of CPU time that Mediatemple uses for billing purposes).

@Ionseidman, those excessive gpu cycles, did you start seeing those pre 3.5 or after the upgrade to 3.5, or both?

After the upgrade for sure, in fact I’m seeing 200-300% more CPU usage on the cron as compared with last month.

We have a bunch of sites on the multi, using variety of themes, but only one of them is scheduling posts in advance.

Let me schedule a few and see if I notice a spike.

that’s what’s odd in all of this: i have 2 sites on this same server cluster that are working just fine. There HAS to be a commonality among all of us who are having this issue.

Didnt notice a CPU spike during the time the cron should have been running.

Let’s go the plugin route. Can you (Doug and lonseidman) and you (Sarah974) post the plugins you have installed for the sites where you are seeing the issue?

Mine:
Site 1. Single wordpress install, custom theme built from scratch

• Contact Form 7
• Cron Gui (installed to try and troubleshoot scheduled posts)
• Electric Studio Auto Post Expire
• Fancybox for WordPress
• Image Focus Point
• Custom built plugin for this site
• More Fields
• Multiple Galleries
• User Role Editor
• Web Editors CMS
• WP-Paginate
• wp-Typography
• wpDirAuth
• WP Super Cache

Site 2: Multi-site/network wordpress install, custom parent theme built from scratch + child themes for the child sites.
Network activated plugins:

• wpDirAuth
• WP Super Cache
• Yoast Breadcrumbs (heavily modified version that is not updated

Plugins site activated in the main site:

• Custom plugin specific for this site
• Events Category
• Custom Post Type Archives in Nav Menus
• More Fields
• Secure and Accessible Contact Form
• Subscribe2 (heavily modified version that is not updated)
• Theme my login

Out of the 6 sites in the network, only the first/main site has actived plugins.

The only commonality between my two sites I’m seeing, plugin-wise, is wpDirAuth (which I maintain), and More Fields. If you two are also using wpDirAuth, I’m going to be very sheepish/embarrassed. LOL!

We have the following plugins installed – some are inactive

Akismet
Blogger Importer
Categories to Tags Converter Importer
Contact Form 7
Disqus Comment System
Fix Facebook Like
Google Analytics Multisite Async
Google Doc Embedder
Google News Sitemap Feed With Multisite Support
Gunner Technology Authorship
Jetpack by WordPress.com
KB Advanced RSS Widget
MailChimp
Newsletter Sign-Up
Options Framework
Popular Posts
Post-Plugin Library
RSS Importer
RSS Manager
Simple RSS Feeds Widget
Simple Video Embedder
Sociable
Subscribe / Connect / Follow Widget
W3 Total Cache
WordPress Editorial Calendar
WordPress Importer
WordPress SEO
WordSocial
Yoast Breadcrumbs