From an image module issue:
""Derivative images were regenerated" during Rebuild Permissions"

There are other scenarios similar to this one which suggest a solution that is as generic/generally availble as possible. How about a small addition to the poormanscron module (?) that can set a temporary flag with some way of measuring the progress, so that for the subsequent period of time, each page load triggers cron for a small set of nodes, until done, and then going back to normal cron schedule again, after the "measure" has been reached?

Should be possible for other modules to hook into this easily."

This might be relevant as its own extra module.

Ref. http://drupal.org/node/226121

Comments

gpk’s picture

gpk commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

Now that poormanscron 6.x-1.x-dev respects the cron_semaphone flag (thereby preventing multiple simultaneous cron threads from running) this could be got to work without risking bringing the server to its knees.

However I agree a better way might be to have a separate module, perhaps using the batch api to create a single thread to work through the complete backlog of cron processing (i.e. similar to Rebuild Permissions itself). Poormanscron is really only intended to replace an external cron "trigger", rather than significantly change the cron behaviour.