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Cron Errors

I’m having a strange problem on some of my Drupal sites. Hourly a cron job runs to rebuild caches and do regular maintenance. This is something every Drupal site needs.

Some time in the last 6 months I was finding that cron would get stuck and not complete in the hour. Another would get started and block. Eventually my webhost stopped spawning processes for my user which lead to weird errors on my web page (page not found errors).

I was logged in as me, not the uber administrator when I started messing about. I cleared the cache tables, including the cache_menu table. I was planning on rebuilding the cache table, then the menu system. I was logged in with the wrong account, and I couldn’t remember the administrator account. Since I had thrown out the menu system, I couldn’t navigate to the lost password page.

I had royally messed up my site.

I fixed it by going into the DB and copying the known password from one user to that of the administrator account. I logged in as administrator, ran cron.php manually, then hit up the page to rebuild the menu system.

So far so good. The next day I ran into this tip: How to reset the password of user 1. A little DB query action to set the administrator account password.

I am still having the weird cron blocking issue though. Every couple days I just log in to my web host and kill the running processes and then everything runs fine for a bit. Bandaid solution that is labour intensive.

I can’t figure out how to debug cron issues in drupal though. I’ve read some tips that running update.php can reset things, but that didn’t work for me. I’ve read this page that suggest modifying core files to add more logging about which module is running cron. I think that will be my next step.

Mistake Effect

A couple nights ago I did some maintenance here on muddylaces. I fixed a mistake I made a long, long time ago. When I first created this drupal site the first account I created was for gfox. I hadn’t read the best practices guide, so I didn’t understand that this was a bad thing.

Changing this in the database proved daunting and fraught with danger. While I was reading the Using Drupal book I discovered the views bulk operations module.

This module provided the ability to change the owner of a node. A light bulb went off and I quickly realized what needed to be done.

I set up a view to see all nodes (content) on my site. I then configured the view to allow bulk editing, and chose the “Change the author of a post (node_assign_owner_action)” operation. I tested this a bunch before enabling this view. The main issue I found was that I couldn’t target content for a specific userid. Instead I targeted content for the currently logged in user.

I then created a new_gfox account, and then when I was logged in as my first account started using the view to assign the content to my new account. A few minutes later I was done.

It was pretty easy to do this once I had the missing piece of the Views Bulk Operations. After the assigning was all done I renamed my first account, then renamed my new account.

The only unfortunate side effect was that the notification or subscription module went berserk with all the changes and sent out a ton of email to people who were subscribed. Woops, should have disabled that for a few minutes.

Accident Crew

Yesterday after the parade was a very scary time. Sox and J left with the girls to go feed them in the car. T and I had the boys and watched the parade a little longer. We started the walk back to the car, and when it was visible, I saw J and Sox standing at the side of the road. J was walking towards T and I with a strange look on her face. Sox was getting Beet into her carseat.

When J was close enough, she said they had been in an accident. They were rear ended while nursing the girls.

My stomach instantly dropped. J said they were OK, but I picked up the pace and caught up to Sox. She was shaken, and I was pretty scared. I gave her a big hug to reassure her, and to make me feel better too. I was pretty worried about her, and for Beet too. The drivers involved were all exchanging information, so I helped with that.

After a couple moments, we could hear an ambulance siren. Sure enough the ambulance was for us, but noone knew who called it in. The crew got out and ensured everyone was fine. Once they determined there were no injuries, they went on their way. As they were leaving a police car showed up, and a firetruck, both with lights and sirens going. The firemen wanted to make sure the scene was safe, and that no cars were on fire nor leaking anything flammable. The police took statements from everyone, and helped figure everything out. I am glad that they arrived because that reassured me and seemed to calm everyone down. Also, with their police report on file, we no longer need to keep track of anyones information. Through it all though, the boys were very patient, and the girls uttered not a peep.

Sox and J were not buckled at the time they were hit. Sox was feeling a little sore yesterday so she headed to a clinic to get herself and Beet examined. I am extremely happy that they are fine. The car is a little banged up, and now we need to start dealing with ICBC to get it fixed. There is a bunch of damage to the drivers side rear quarter panel, the rear bumper, the rear door, potentially the rear tire, and the front bumper too (our car was pushed into the one in front of us). We have plans to head to Vancouver this weekend so hopefully we won’t be without a vehicle (although a close friend of ours offered her van for us to use).

Quite the saga. Imagine sitting in a parked vehicle at the side of the road and being rear ended. Scary. I am just glad that nobody in any of the four cars was hurt.

Deck Individuals

Time for an update on the deck replacement progress. Last post we saw the deck was half demolished.

This post the new deck is half built. Last post was on September 9. This post November 12. This has been an ongoing process for over 2 months. Time to take some action and maybe get the individuals involved moving a little quicker. Not having a deck is a pain when you have a dog that wants to go outside to pee a few times a day.

These pics were actually taken Oct 28, but nothing has changed since then.

Hammerfest Jumps

This weekend is Hammerfest weekend. Much like previous years I am really looking forward to the race. I hope the course hasn’t changed too much from previous years, but I hope there are a few changes.

Each year the course is different due to new logging, and since I missed last year’s race, I am expecting more than a few changes. 2 years ago was a fun race though. New, and big, table top jumps. Large open sections of no trees to hit (done that a few times during this race). Less uphill than previous years.

Plus, for the first race ever, I will be wearing a decent pair of goggles. New Oakley MX O Frames. Sweet. No more way too dark and scratched to hell ex ski goggles from the 70’s for me. 🙂

About

About Me

This is the about page. It is a work in progress.

Who am I and what do I do?

At heart I am a geek. I love new technology and gadgets. I love the thrill of snowboarding and mountain biking. I regularly donate blood to the Canadian Blood Services.

Hobbies

  • Mountaing Biking
  • Snowboarding
  • Photography
  • Websites and web technologies

Amazing Life’s Events

Dreams and Goal

Something I have been thinking about for a very long time is getting a tattoo. I have a couple designs in mind, but the basic theme for the fist one is a mountain bike chainring.

Some day I want to do the 24 Hours of Adrenaline Race as a soloist. I did my first 24 hour race in September 2005, and was so inspired by some of the solo riders that I want to try it myself some day.

I have heard about the Mt 7 Psychosis Downhill mountain bike race.

Some day I would like to learn a martial art. Not sure which one, but I would like to learn something.

I’d also like to learn to play the guitar some day, but that is such a departure from all my other hobbies, it is a little scary. I don’t know how to read music, so I can see myself getting frustrated if I don’t catch on quickly.

Postings Supplied

Just configured the Aggregator2 module for this site. I am now importing my postings from gf-tech to this site. Cool! This will happen automatically as I post on gf-tech.

The documentation on this module was a little difficult to understand. The thing I really want to do it have these posts imported into a specific category, but I can’t figure out how to set this up. The supplied documentation doesn’t help. Time to delve into the forums I think.

Expectations Planned

piggy in the middle

Last Monday Suede and I headed out for our second annual trip to the Saanich Fair. Last year we had a great time, so we had high expectations for this year. Checking the schedule, there were a few things we wanted to see, so me made plans, and headed out there.

Turns out the fair is pretty much the same from year to year (many of the same exhibits in the same locations). 🙁 We caught the BMX stunt show, which was interesting, but a little slow! We wandered ’round, checked out the animals, and I took a few pictures. We just weren’t feeling into this year, so we ended up leaving before seeing everything we had originally planned on. Too bad.

My pics are here.

Snapping Ball

random bits

Some random catching up bits

Saturday night Sue and I went out for dinner with her mom while she was visiting. While driving there, there was a loud snapping sound that came from the drivers seat, and I felt myself sink into the seat just a little more. Strange. Time to make another appointment with Tommys. I have so many other things I would rather spend my money on.

Today I was updating my Palm calendar. I had edited a bunch of entries, some in the future, some in the past. When I least expected it, the palm desktop application crashed. I thought it needed a simple restart, but I had a few problems getting it to quit. I had to bring up the task manager and kill it that way. Unfortunately when you do that, you don’t get to keep all your changes (apparently). Crap. I had some problems trying to remember all the ones I had updated, and added.

On the lighter side of things, today was my day to go home at lunch to check in on Yoshi. On the way home I decided to take him to the park for a quick (very quick actually) walk. While there we were crossing a small field, and I saw Yoshi go running off while sniffing the air. He embedded himself into a bush so I could only see his back end. His little tail was dancing all about so I though he either smelled something good in the bush, or there was a bird or rabbit in there. I was wrong. When he backed out of the bush I saw he had found a tennis ball. He was so happy running around with that thing. Silly dog.