By jochenh on

Hi,

I have simplenews running on a drupal 4.7.4 site. We currently have about 3,800 people subscribed to some of our newsletters. I have double checked this list myself and found no duplicates. But when I send a newsletter to our list, I get the same newsletter about 5 times in my own gmail account (which is only subscribed *once*)...

This of course worries me because I don't want to have people cancel their subscriptions, thinking that we are spamming them by sending out the same thing multiple times. Since no dupes are present in the list I am not sure why this is happening...

Any help would be appreciated !

best
- Jochen

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

mdixoncm’s picture

mdixoncm commented

Just from a quick look, it seems that simplenews does not check if it is already running each time cron is run.

So, the first time you run cron everything is good and the mail gets sent normally, but if your mails haven't finished sending before the next cron run then another instance of the sending mail process is fired up and it will send a second copy of the mail (but only to users who have yet to recieve a mail). And so the process will continue - the users at the end of your list will recieve the email as many times as cron has run.

This is a bit of a pain (to put it lightly). The quick and dirty solution is to disable your cron job whilst sending the newsletters, hit cron.php manually to kick start the process, and then reenable your cron job when everything is finished ... will have a look and see if this is in the handbook, if not then i will create an entry for it now ...

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robomalo’s picture

robomalo commented

We have a very large mailing list too (about 8k). Do you know if this is going to be fixed anytime soon? I would hate to move to a "nonDrupal" mailer. I want to keep everything tidy and running from one system. Our subscribers, not to mention my superiors, are quite dissatisfied. I put myself on the receiving list and got 18 e-mails.

remocrevo’s picture

remocrevo commented

See http://drupal.org/node/70995 for possible solution for 4.7.x

Drupal 5.0 has fixed this problem by using semiphores (in the same code as article above) to prevent multiple runs of cron.php

Taekyon’s picture

Taekyon commented

I have a simplenews newsletter to which about 500 people are subscribed, and I have been getting complaints of people receiving up to four different copies.
Please note: I have to use poormanscron.

My impression is that the problem may have started only _after_ my provider switched from php 4 to php 5, but I have no way of verifying this.
Is anyone else seeing this?

theorichel’s picture

theorichel commented

On Drupal 5.3. First mailing to 5000 subscribers. Several complaints of multiple receptions.

mediamash’s picture

mediamash commented

was a solution found for this double sending error?

theorichel’s picture

theorichel commented

My Poormanscron was set at 10 minutes. The sending of the whole list takes 50 minutes or so which apparently meant that it gave the command to send 5 times. I understand that it shouldnt but some people apparently suffer from it. Hope this is the correct explanation. I use Simplenews now as follows:
Disable Poormanscron
Give the send command
Wait for a message that it has been executed
Run Cron manually
Wait for Simplenews to say that everything has been sent
Turn Poormanscron back on

Have had no problems since.