Last night, my activity stream stopped updating. I'm not sure what could have caused this. Running the cron script does not help.

Is there something that could have happened that would cause this?
Is there something that could be causing a delay that will correct itself?

Thanks for your help.

Comments

dmetzcher’s picture

dmetzcher commented

I went into the settings on my profile for Activity Stream (where all the usernames and feeds are added) and simply saved it. Running cron.php imported everything that hadn't been imported for the last 36 hours.

I have a feeling it had something to do with the Flickr module. I've had it installed for months now, so that I can use simple tags include Flickr photos (by photo ID) in my blog posts. The other night, right around the time that Activity Stream stopped working, I had tried to enter my Flickr username in the field it creates on my profile page. That produced an error, so I tried the Flickr NSID. Another error. Finally I erased the NSID and decided I'd update the module to the latest version "later". Maybe that module caused an issue with Activity Stream? It's the only thing I did around the time the Activity Stream module stopped importing.

I'll keep an eye on it. It looks like it's working now, so I think all is well.

akalsey’s picture

akalsey commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Sounds like Drupal's cron job was failing before it ever got to Activity Stream.

Drupal modules can provide a function that runs when cron does. The functions run in serial, starting with one module and looping through until all the modules have completed their hooks. If one module has a bug in their cron function that causes cron to quit (say a fatal error or something that causes PHP or your web server to time out), then any module that was in line after it won't run cron.

geodaniel’s picture

geodaniel commented
Title: Activity Stream not updating » Activity Stream not updating when Flickr username is entered
Version: 6.x-1.0-beta1 » 6.x-1.0-beta2
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active

I have also noticed this, and removing my Flickr information (and subsequently disabling the module) has allowed the twitter feed to update successfully on next cron run.

akalsey’s picture

akalsey commented

I think this is an issue of Drupal disabling Activity Stream's cron when one of the sub modules takes a long time to fetch it's feed. Saving the feed settings again causes Drupal to re-enable cron.

The solution here is to figure out a way to set a timeout or detect that a sub module is slow and force Drupal to keep the cron in place. Handle these errors inside the module instead of allowing Drupal to do it for us.

akalsey’s picture

akalsey commented
Title: Activity Stream not updating when Flickr username is entered » Activity Stream not updating
Status: Active » Closed (duplicate)

Marking as a duplicate of #331081: Must resave settings to enable automatic item import via cron