Scheduled Tasks - vanishing into the Void

[Rob_Dudley]

We've got a really frustrating issue with our ColdFusion 8.01 box that seems to be getting worse as time goes on.

Every so often (the actually time seems pretty random - it could be 24 hours it could be 5 days) scheduled tasks that have been created in the ColdFusion Administration are simply disappearing.

There's no pattern that we can see as not all the tasks vanish at the same time but, innevitably, the tasks will eventually drop out of the list.

It doesn't seem to coincide with anything we're doing (CF restarts, Server patches, etc.) and the tasks themselves run without error ... assuming they haven't been removed.

Has anyone else experienced this behaviour? I've tried adding <cfflush ... /> to the scripts but they still disappear over time.

Any assitance gratefully received.

Rob

(cross posted at http://blog.rubicon.je/ and http://serverfault.com/questions/177383/why-do-our-cf8-scheduled-tasks-disappear-randomly)

[Dinghus]

Have you looked at the ColdFusion logs to see if there is any error? How about the server logs? Are there server backups or restores going on?

[Charlie Arehart]

Adding CFFLUSH? Hmm. That's curious. Where would you be adding that? I really don't see how CFML code could have an effect on a seeming disappearance of scheduled tasks, so just curious about that.

But like Dinghus said, check the logs, and especially the schedule.log. If you didn't notice, you can enable scheduled task logging in the CF Admin's Logging Settings page.

Look also at the \runtime\logs or \logs.

Let us know what you find. There's got to be an explanation.

/charlie

[Rob_Dudley]

Charlie - I can't remember where I saw it but it was suggested (on a Blog post I think) as a potential fix for vanishing tasks. Doesn't make much sense to me either but am willing to try pretty much anything.

Looking through the logs I can't see anything obvious. The scheduler.log shows the tasks being recreated as expected but I'll need to wait for a specific task to disappear so I can search thoroughly.

The other log files don't shed any light but again, without a specific time slot to search it's like looking for the proverbial needle.

Rob

[Dinghus]

Whooooa.

Back the scheduler buggy up here.

The scheduler.log shows the tasks being recreated as expected

Why would the tasks be "recreated as expected"? We may be onto something here. You also say you don't have a time frame to look at for problems.

Are your scheduled tasks not really scheduled?