Long running php script failing as a cron - php

Question

I have written a PHP script that uploads images from a directory to a remote server using ftp_put. I have set this as a cron using task scheduler and wget. Initially it works great, but then after a while, do not know exactly when, the process freezes, by that "windows task scheduler" saying it is running the job, but no photos are no longer being uploaded.
Initially I thought the problem was due the max_execution_time , but I have set that to 24 hours by using set_time_limit(3600*24); and I have set max_input_time to 600 seconds (10 mins).
Why doesn't it complete the task?
Here is the code:
if($conn){
if (is_dir($imagesPath)){
if($files = opendir($imagesPath)){
while(($file = readdir($files)) !== false){
if($file != "." && $file != ".." && preg_match("/\.jpg|\.JPG|\.gif|\.GIF|\.png|\.PNG|\.bmp|\.BMP/",$file) && date("Ymd",filemtime($imagesPath.'/'.$file)) >= date("Ymd",strtotime(date("Y-m-d")." -".$days." day"))){
if(ftp_put($conn, $remotePath.$file, $imagesPath.'/'.$file, FTP_BINARY)){
//echo $file;
$counter++;
}
else{
echo '<br>'.$imagesPath.'/'.$file;
}
}
}
closedir($files);
echo $counter.' Files Uploaded on '.date("Y-m-d");
}
else{
echo 'Unable to read '.$imagesPath;
}
}
else{
echo $imagesPath.' Does not exist';
}
ftp_close($conn);
}else{
echo "Failed to connect";
}
/* End */
exit;
Added:
/* Settings */
// Set Max Execution time
set_time_limit(3600*24);
at the top of the script.
Thanks.

Answer 1

I am working on something similar and I found the following to help:
1) make sure every step is conditional so if something fails to load (like an image, ftp connection etc.) the procedure keeps running (iterating).
2) set a small sleep() at the end of the file (or between difficult steps). I am using it for images as well and when the connection to the image lags or the 'image write' time lags it helps.
3) set the scheduler to execute the script often (my is 2 times a day) but it could be set to hourly as long as you check the box: do not start new instance if the script is already running
4) depending on the setup of your server, check for other tasks which may interrupt the script run-time. It is not always PHP issue. As long as you have properly scheduled task to re-execute the script you should be fine.
5) for easy debugging, instead of the echo statement (which is most likely showing in your cmd window) use a simple file logging like ( $message = fopen($myLogFile, 'w'); ) additionally to your "Does not exist" or "Failed to connect" statements and include more details so when it fails, you can go to your log file and see when and why it failed.
6) you may try to use an infinite loop like ( while (true) { ... your code... }) instead of the set_time_limit().
I hope this helps :)