Spontaneously started having "Attempting to re-run cron while it is already running." errors. The cron_semaphore variable is left lying around even though cron has failed and is no longer running! Disabling update status module and manually removing the variable fixes the problem. Putting it back makes it break again. Errors on the page appear about "database has gone away". It appears I'm hitting some kind of timeout during update status collection?

Comments

dddave’s picture

dddave commented
Category: bug » support
Priority: Critical » Normal
Status: Active » Closed (duplicate)

Hi,

this is a pretty common problem (update module vs cron) and a search should bring up loads of ressources and most likely a solution.

UNarmed’s picture

UNarmed commented

Did you find a solution to this? I am having the same problem, the core update module (i think that the update mode your are refering to) is breaking cron and not allowing it to run =/

UNarmed’s picture

UNarmed commented

Hey i found a solution that worked for me here
http://drupal.org/node/382682#comment-3483030

Basically disable the update status module and then run this 

DELETE FROM variable WHERE name="cron_semaphore";
DELETE FROM variable WHERE name = "cron_last";