I'm trying to create a script that creates unique codes and writes them to a textfile.
I've managed to generate the codes, and write them to the file.
Now my problem is the fact that my loop keeps running, resulting in over 92 000 codes being written to the file, before the server times-out.
I've done some logging, and it seems that everything works fine, it's just that after a certain amount of seconds, all my variables are reset and everything starts from scratch. The time interval after which this happens varies from time to time.
I've already set ini_set('memory_limit', '200M'); ini_set('max_execution_time',0); at the top of my script. Maybe there's a php time-out setting I'm missing?
The script is a function in a controller. I set the ini_set at the beginning of this function. This is the loop I'm going through:
public function generateAction() {
ini_set('memory_limit', '200M');
ini_set('max_execution_time',0);
$codeArray = array();
$numberOfCodes = 78000;
$codeLength = 8;
$totaalAantal = 0;
$file = fopen("codes.txt","a+");
while(count($codeArray)<$numberOfCodes){
$code = self::newCode($codeLength);
if(!in_array($code,$codeArray))
{
$totaalAantal++;
$codeArray[] = $code;
fwrite($file,'total: '.$totaalAantal."\r\n");
}
}
fclose($file);
}
In the file this would give something like this:
total: 1
total: 2
total: ...
total: 41999
total: 42000
total: 1
total: 2
total: ...
total: 41999
total: 42000
Thanks.
Edit: so far we've established that the generateAction() is called 2 or 3 times, before the end of the script, when it should only be called once.
I already found the solution for this problem.
The host's script limit was set to 90 seconds, and because this script had to run for longer, I had to run it via the command line.
Taking account of the test with uniqid(), we can say that variables are not reseted, but the method generateAction() is called several times.
Since you code is probably synchronous, we may say that generateAction() is called several times because the main script is called several times.
What happens in detail?
Because of the nature of your algorithm, each pass in the loop is slower then the previous one. So the duration of executing generateAction() may be quite long.
You probably don't wait for the end, and you stop the process or even start the process from a new page. Nevertheless, the process don't really stop so soon, and it keeps running in back-end. I've observed such a behavior on my local WAMP/LAMP installation: the script is not actually stopped even if I stop the page, if I close the page, even if I close the navigator or if I restart Apache.
So it happens to you that several script processes are writing simultaneously in the codes.txt file.
In order to avoid this, you can for example lock the file during the loop using function flock().
Related
I have a products database that synchronizes with product data ever morning.
The process is very clear:
Get all products from database by query
Loop through all products, and get and xml from the other server by product_id
Update data from xml
Log the changes to file.
If I query a low amount of items, but limiting it to 500 random products for example, everything goes fine. But when I query all products, my script SOMETIMES goes on the fritz and starts looping multiple times. Hours later I still see my log file growing and products being added.
I checked everything I could think of, for example:
Are variables not used twice without overwriting each other
Does the function call itself
Does it happen with a low amount of products too: no.
The script is called using a cronjob, are the settings ok. (Yes)
The reason that makes it especially weird is that it sometimes goes right, and sometimes it doesnt. Could this be some memory problem?
EDIT
wget -q -O /dev/null http://example.eu/xxxxx/cron.php?operation=sync its in webmin called on a specific hour and minute
Code is hundreds of lines long...
Thanks
You have:
max_execution_time disabled. Your script won't end until the process is complete for as long as it needed.
memory_limit disabled. There is no limit to how much data stored in memory.
500 records were completed without issues. This indicates that the scripts completes its process before the next cronjob iteration. For example, if your cron runs every hour, then the 500 records are processed in less than an hour.
If you have a cronjob that is going to process large amount of records, then consider adding lock mechanism to the process. Only allow the script to run once, and start again when the previous process is complete.
You can create script lock as part of a shell script before executing your php script. Or, if you don't have an access to your server you can use database lock within the php script, something like this.
class ProductCronJob
{
protected $lockValue;
public function run()
{
// Obtain a lock
if ($this->obtainLock()) {
// Run your script if you have valid lock
$this->syncProducts();
// Release the lock on complete
$this->releaseLock();
}
}
protected function syncProducts()
{
// your long running script
}
protected function obtainLock()
{
$time = new \DateTime;
$timestamp = $time->getTimestamp();
$this->lockValue = $timestamp . '_syncProducts';
$db = JFactory::getDbo();
$lock = [
'lock' => $this->lockValue,
'timemodified' => $timestamp
];
// lock = '0' indicate that the cronjob is not active.
// Update #__cronlock set lock = '', timemodified = '' where name = 'syncProducts' and lock = '0'
// $result = $db->updateObject('#__cronlock', $lock, 'id');
// $lock = SELECT * FROM #__cronlock where name = 'syncProducts';
if ($lock !== false && (string)$lock !== (string)$this->lockValue) {
// Currently there is an active process - can't start a new one
return false;
// You can return false as above or add extra logic as below
// Check the current lock age - how long its been running for
// $diff = $timestamp - $lock['timemodified'];
// if ($diff >= 25200) {
// // The current script is active for 7 hours.
// // You can change 25200 to any number of seconds you want.
// // Here you can send notification email to site administrator.
// // ...
// }
}
return true;
}
protected function releaseLock()
{
// Update #__cronlock set lock = '0' where name = 'syncProducts'
}
}
Your script is running for quite some time (~45m) and wget think it's "timing out" since you don't return any data. By default wget will have a 900s timeout value and a retry count of 20. So first you should probably change your wget command to prevent this:
wget --tries=0 --timeout=0 -q -O /dev/null http://example.eu/xxxxx/cron.php?operation=sync
Now removing the timeout could lead to other issue, so instead you could send (and flush to force webserver to send it) data from your script to make sure wget doesn't think the script "timed out", something every 1000 loops or something like that. Think of this as a progress bar...
Just keep in mind that you will hit an issue when the run time will get close to your period as 2 crons will run in parallel. You should optimize your process and/or have a lock mechanism maybe?
I see two possibilities:
- chron calls the script much more often
- script takes too long somehow.
you can try estimate the time a single iteration of the loop takes.
this can be done with time(). perhaps the result is suprising, perhaps not. you can probably get the number of results too. multiply the two, that way you will have an estimate of how long the process should take.
$productsToSync = $db->loadObjectList();
and
foreach ($productsToSync AS $product) {
it seems you load every result into an array. this wont work for huge databases because obviously a million rows wont fit in memory. you should just get one result at a time. with mysql there are methods that just fetch one thing at a time from the resource, i hope yours allows the same.
I also see you execute another query each iteration of the loop. this is something I try to avoid. perhaps you can move this to after the first query has ended and do all of those in one big query? otoh this may bite my first suggestion.
also if something goes wrong, try to be paranoid when debugging. measure as much as you can. time as much as you can when its a performance issue. put the timings in you log file. usually you will find the bottleneck.
I solved the problem myself. Thanks for all the replies!
My MySQL timed out, that was the problem. As soon as I added:
ini_set('mysql.connect_timeout', 14400);
ini_set('default_socket_timeout', 14400);
to my script the problem stopped. I really hope this helps someone. Ill upvote all the locking answers, because those were very helpful!
I've been completely unsuccessful finding an answer to this question. Hopefully someone here can help.
I have a PHP script (a WordPress template, to be specific) that automatically imports and processes images when a user hits it. The problem is that the image processing takes up a lot of memory, particularly if multiple users are accessing the template at the same time and initiating the image processing. My server crashed multiple times because of this.
My solution to this was to not execute the image-processing function if it was already running. Before the function started running, I would check a database entry named image_import_running to see if it was set to false. If it was, the function then ran. The very first thing the function did was set image_import_running to true. Then, after it was all finished, I set it back to false.
It worked great -- in theory. The site hasn't crashed since, I can tell you that. But there are two major problems with it:
If the user closes the page while it's loading, the script never finishes processing the images and therefore never sets image_import_running back to false. The template will never process images again until it's manually set to false.
If the script times out while it's processing images -- and that's a strong possibility if there are many images in the queue -- you have essentially the same problem as No. 1: the script never gets to the point where it sets image_import_running back to false.
To handle No. 1 (the first one of the two problems I realized), I added ignore_user_abort(true) to the script. Did it work? I don't know, because No. 2 is still an issue. That's where I'm stumped.
If I could ask the server whether the script was running or not, I could do something like this:
if($import_running && $script_not_running) {
$import_running = false;
}
But how do I set that $script_not_running variable? Beats me.
I've shared this entire story with you just in case you have some other brilliant solution.
Try using
ignore_user_abort(true); it will continue to run even if the person leaves and closes the browser.
you might also want to put a number instead of true false in the db record and set a maximum number of processes that can run together
As others have suggested, it would be best to move the image processing out of the request itself.
As an interim "fix", store a timestamp alongside image_import_running when a processing job begins (e.g., image_import_commenced). This is a very crude mechanism, but if you know the maximum time that a job can run before timing out, the script can check whether that period of time has elapsed.
e.g., if image_import_running is still true but the current time is more than 10 minutes since image_import_commenced, run the processing anyway.
What about setting a transient with an expiry time that would throttle the operation?
if(!get_transient( 'import_running' )) {
set_transient( 'import_running', true, 30 ); // set a 30 second transient on the import.
run_the_import_function();
}
I would rather store the job into database flagging it pending and set a cron job to execute the processing one job at a time.
For Me i use just this simple idea with a text document. for example run.txt file
in the top script use :
if((file_get_contents('run.txt') != 'run'){ // here the script will work
$file = fopen('run.txt', 'w+');
fwrite($file, 'run');
fclose('run.txt');
}else{
exit(); // if it find 'run' in run.txt the script will stop
}
And add this in the end of your script file
$file = fopen('run.txt', 'w+');
fwrite($file, ''); //will delete run word for the next try ;)
fclose('run.txt');
That will check if script already work by checking runt.txt contents
if run word exist in run.txt it will not run
Running a cron would definitively be a better solution. Idea to store url in a table is a good one.
To answer to the original question, you may run a ps auxwww command with exec (Check this page: How to get list of running php scripts using PHP exec()? ) and move your function in a separated php file.
exec("ps auxwww|grep myfunction.php|grep -v grep", $output);
Just add following on the top of your script.
<?php
// Ensures single instance of script run at a time.
$fileName = basename(__FILE__);
$output = shell_exec("ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep $fileName | wc -l");
//echo $output;
if ($output > 2)
{
echo "Already running - $fileName\n";
exit;
}
// Your php script code.
?>
In PHP, I want to put a number of second delay on each iteration of the loop.
for ($i=0; $i <= 10; $i++) {
$file_exists=file_exists($location.$filename);
if($file_exists) {
break;
}
//sleep for 3 seconds
}
How can I do this?
Use PHP sleep() function. http://php.net/manual/en/function.sleep.php
This stops execution of next loop for the given number of seconds. So something like this
for ($i=0; $i <= 10; $i++) {
$file_exists=file_exists($location.$filename);
if($file_exists) {
break;
}
sleep(3); // this should halt for 3 seconds for every loop
}
I see what you are doing... your delaying a script to constantly check for a file on the filesystem (one that is being uploaded or being written by another script I assume). This is a BAD way to do it.
Your script will run slowly. Choking the server if several users are running that script.
Your server may timeout for some users.
HDD access is a costly resource.
There are better ways to do this.
You could use Ajax. And use a timeout to call your PHP script every few seconds. This will avoid the slow script loading. And also you can keep doing it constantly (the current for loop will only run for 33 seconds and then stop).
You can use a database. In some cases database access is faster than HDD access. Especially with views and caching. The script creating the file/uploading the file can set a flag in a table (i.e. file_exists) and then you can have a script that checks that field in your database.
You can use sleep(3) which sleeps the thread for 3 seconds.
Correction sleep method in php are in seconds.
Hare are two ways to sleep php script for some period of time. When you have your code and want to pause script working for some time use these functions.
In these examples the first part of code will be done on script run and the second part of code will be done but with time delay.
Using sleep() function you can define sleep time in seconds.
Example:
echo "Message 1";
// The first part of code.
$timeInSeconds = 3;
sleep($timeInSeconds);
// The second part of code.
echo "Message 2";
This way it is possible to sleep php script for 3 seconds. Using this function you can sleep script for whole number (integer) of seconds.
Using usleep() function you can define sleep time in microseconds. This sleep time is convenient for intervals that require more precise time than one second.
Example:
echo "Message 1";
// The first part of code.
$timeInMicroSeconds = 2487147;
usleep($timeInMicroSeconds);
// The second part of code.
echo "Message 2";
You can use this function if you want to sleep php for smaller time values than second (float). In this example I have put script to sleep for 2.487147 seconds.
Have you considered using a PHP Daemon script using supervisorD. I use it in multiple tasks that are required to be running all the time.
The catch is making sure that each time you are running your script you check for memory resources. If its too high, stop the process and then let it restart itself up again.
I have successfully used this process to be always checking database records for tasks to process.
It might be overkill but worth considering.
I have a script that is very long to execute, so when i run it it hit the max execution time on my webserver and end up timing out.
To illustrate that imagine i have a for loop that make some pretty intensive manipulation one million time. How could i spread this loop execution in several parts so that i don t hit the max execution time of my Webserver?
Many thanks,
If you have an application that is going to loop a known number of times (i.e. you are sure that it's going to finish some time) you can increase time limit inside the loop:
foreach ($data as $row) {
set_time_limit(10);
// do your stuff here
}
This solution will protect you from having one run-away iteration, but will let your whole script run undisturbed as long as you need.
Best solution is to use http://php.net/manual/en/function.set-time-limit.php to change the timeout. Otherwise, you can use 301 redirects to send to an updated URL on a timeout.
$threshold = 10000;
$t = microtime();
$i = isset( $_GET['i'] ) ? $_GET['i'] : 0;
for( $i; $i < 10000000; $i++ )
{
if( microtime - $t > $threshold )
{
header('Location: http://www.example.com/?i='.$i);
exit;
}
// Your code
}
The browser will only respect a few redirects before it stops, you're better to use javascript to force a page reload.
I someday used a technique where I splitted the work from one file into three parts. It was just an array of 120.000 elements with intensive operation. I created a splitter script which stored the arrays in a database of the size of 40.000 each one. Then I created an HTML file with a redirect to the first PHP file to compute the first 40.000 elements. After computing the first 40.000 elments I had again a HTML forward to the next PHP file and so on.
Not very elegant, but it worked :-)
If you have the right permissions on your hosting server, you could use the php interpreter to execute a php script and have it run in the background.
See Asynchronous shell exec in PHP.
if you are running a script that needs to execute for unknown time, you can use:
set_time_limit(0);
If possible you can make the script so that it handles a portion of the wanted operations. Once it completes say 10%, you via AJAX call the script again to execute the next 10%. But there are circumstances where this is not an ideal solution, it really depends on what you are doing.
I used this method to create a web-based crawler which only ran on my computer for instance. If it had to do the operations at once it would time out as well. So it was split into 200 "tasks", each called via Ajax once the previous completes. Works perfectly, and it's been over a year since it started running (crawling?)
I wanted to execute a bunch of code for 5 seconds and if it has not finished executing within the specificed time frame I need to execute another piece of code..
Whether it's possible?
Ex..
There are two functions A and B
If A takes more than 30 seconds to execute the control should pass on to B
During function A you could periodically check how long the script has been executing, and if it goes over x seconds, run B:
function checkTime($start) {
$current = time();
$secondsToExecute = 5;
if (($start+$secondsToExecute) <= $current) {
func_b();
}
}
function func_a($start) {
// do some code
checkTime($start);
// do some code
checkTime($start);
// do some code
}
function func_b() {
// do something else
exit();
}
func_a(time());
http://php.net/manual/en/features.connection-handling.php
Set a time limit and a shutdown function, which checks if the status is 2 (timeout) and does your stuff if so.
One thing to note is that the time limit set this way only counts actual php processing time. Time spent with php waiting for another process or a database or http connection, etc, will not count and your time limit will not be considered reached.
If you need to count actual time that passed, even if it was not php processing time, you're going to have to go with the above suggested answer. Manually inserting that time check in places where it makes sense is the best, i.e. inside loops that you know may run too long, maybe even not on every iteration but on every N iterations, etc. Alternatively a more general approach is to use register_tick_function(), but that might lead to a noticeable performance hit with a low tick count, and you must take care to unregister it or use appropriate flags so you don't end up infinitely starting more and more calls to your timeout handling code once the timeout has happened.
Other approaches are also possible, you can register a handler for some signal using pcntl_signal() and have it sent to your process when the time limit is reached by an outside program ('man timeout' if you are on a linux box) or by a fork()-ed instance of your own php script, etc.