Cron tasks do not run at system startup until you manually trigger them

[seanwlk]

What's going wrong?

Cron tasks running through PM2 do not stat at system statup/reboot and i have to manually pm2 start x them. I have a DNS-Updater task that runs every 30 minutes and this is the ecosystem file:

module.exports = {
  apps : [{
    name   : "DNS-Updater",
    namespace : "task",
    script : "python3",
    watch: false,
    instances: 1,
    args : "dnsupdater.py",
    cron_restart : "*/30 * * * *",
    autorestart : false
  }]
}

I was forced to set autorestart : false because otherwise every time the task stops it restarts so this causes it to run constantly instead of the scheduled cron.
I saw that in the new release 5.4.0 was added an autostart #5782 but this won't work either because it does not trigger at system startup

PS. It might be very well that I'm using it in a wrong way, but honestly the docs aren't very clear

How could we reproduce this issue?

Create a cron task without autorestart, start it, reboot the system and it won't run ever until you first start it with pm2 start x

Supporting information

--- PM2 report ----------------------------------------------------------------
Date                 : Sat Jun 01 2024 10:17:23 GMT+0200 (Central European Summer Time)
===============================================================================
--- Daemon -------------------------------------------------
pm2d version         : 5.4.0
node version         : 20.13.1
node path            : /root/.nvm/versions/node/v20.13.1/bin/pm2
argv                 : /root/.nvm/versions/node/v20.13.1/bin/node,/root/.nvm/versions/node/v20.13.1/lib/node_modules/pm2/lib/Daemon.js
argv0                : node
user                 : root
uid                  : 0
gid                  : 0
uptime               : 6min
===============================================================================
--- CLI ----------------------------------------------------
local pm2            : 5.4.0
node version         : 20.13.1
node path            : /root/.nvm/versions/node/v20.13.1/bin/pm2
argv                 : /root/.nvm/versions/node/v20.13.1/bin/node,/root/.nvm/versions/node/v20.13.1/bin/pm2,report
argv0                : node
user                 : root
uid                  : 0
gid                  : 0
===============================================================================
--- System info --------------------------------------------
arch                 : arm64
platform             : linux
type                 : Linux
cpus                 : Cortex-A53
cpus nb              : 4
freemem              : 437067776
totalmem             : 951398400
home                 : /root
===============================================================================
--- PM2 list -----------------------------------------------
┌────┬────────────────────┬─────────────┬─────────┬─────────┬──────────┬────────┬──────┬───────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
│ id │ name               │ namespace   │ version │ mode    │ pid      │ uptime │ ↺    │ status    │ cpu      │ mem      │ user     │ watching │
├────┼────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────┼─────────┼──────────┼────────┼──────┼───────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┤
│ 0  │ DNS-Updater        │ task        │ N/A     │ fork    │ N/A      │ 0      │ 0    │ stopped   │ 0%       │ 0b       │ root     │ disabled │
│ 1  │ HR-API             │ api         │ N/A     │ fork    │ 21632    │ 6m     │ 0    │ online    │ 0.6%     │ 59.4mb   │ root     │ disabled │
│ 2  │ HR-Sync            │ task        │ N/A     │ fork    │ N/A      │ 0      │ 0    │ stopped   │ 0%       │ 0b       │ root     │ disabled │
│ 3  │ PlexAPI            │ api         │ N/A     │ fork    │ 21633    │ 6m     │ 0    │ online    │ 0.1%     │ 35.3mb   │ root     │ disabled │
│ 4  │ TelegramChatBot    │ api         │ N/A     │ fork    │ 21634    │ 6m     │ 0    │ online    │ 0%       │ 42.0mb   │ root     │ disabled │
└────┴────────────────────┴─────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴──────────┴────────┴──────┴───────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘
===============================================================================
--- Daemon logs --------------------------------------------
/root/.pm2/pm2.log last 20 lines:
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: Node.js version      : 20.13.1
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: Current arch         : arm64
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: PM2 home             : /root/.pm2
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: PM2 PID file         : /root/.pm2/pm2.pid
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: RPC socket file      : /root/.pm2/rpc.sock
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: BUS socket file      : /root/.pm2/pub.sock
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: Application log path : /root/.pm2/logs
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: Worker Interval      : 30000
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: Process dump file    : /root/.pm2/dump.pm2
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: Concurrent actions   : 2
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: SIGTERM timeout      : 1600
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: ===============================================================================
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: [PM2][WORKER] Registering a cron job on: 0
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: App [HR-API:1] starting in -fork mode-
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:09: PM2 log: [PM2][WORKER] Registering a cron job on: 2
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:10: PM2 log: App [PlexAPI:3] starting in -fork mode-
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:10: PM2 log: App [HR-API:1] online
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:10: PM2 log: App [TelegramChatBot:4] starting in -fork mode-
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:10: PM2 log: App [PlexAPI:3] online
PM2        | 2024-06-01T10:11:10: PM2 log: App [TelegramChatBot:4] online

[gmillerd]

The combination of cron_restart && autostart=false seems to have regressed, and now the 'Deregistering a cron job' and 'Registering a cron job' is in a loop here, its stopping itself and forbidding its execution in cron. I am guessing somewhere autostart is false and autorestart is being evaluated as true as such? It seems right where that occurs.

Like the OP says the reproduction is ... make a app defintion with cron_restart for every second and autostart=false and it never runs, but does the de/reregister loop.

The old technique of inspecting env variables and exiting early does not work anymore to quit early, prev_restart_delay is set for change, but not for start.