Solving a problem with the Mailwizz cron jobs when using the ISPconfig 3 panel with Jailkit

[OptiBiz1]

I thought I'd share my experiences with the Mailwizz cron jobs when using the ISPconfig3 panel with Jailkit installed.
When installing ISPconfig 3 you can choose if you want to use Jailkit ( http://olivier.sessink.nl/jailkit/ ) or not. This decision comes with something you need to be aware of, the Mailwizz cron jobs won't work without a little tweak in the cron setup. It's easy to fix, but it must be fixed otherwise your sendouts will be paused forever . I have done this before but I had kind of forgot about it now when I moved from one dedicated server to another yesterday.

When you create the Mailwizz cron jobs they are saved by ISPconfig 3 in /etc/cron.d and they are created like this:

MAILTO=''
SHELL='/usr/sbin/jk_chrootsh'
* * * * * <user> /path/to/php5 -q /path/to/mailwizz/apps/console/console.php send-campaigns >/dev/null 2>&1
.
.
.

this must be changed to

MAILTO=''
SHELL='/bin/sh'

* * * * * <user> /path/to/php5 -q /path/to/mailwizz/apps/console/console.php send-campaigns >/dev/null 2>&1
.
.
.

This is all you need to do.

(one thing of more "cosmetic nature" is that you rename your changed cron jobs from e.g. "ispc_chrooted_web1" to "ispc_web1" since it's not chrooted anymore)

 

[HostingTEK]

<?php

$key =  $_GET['key'];
$command = $_GET['command'];

$validCommands = ['send-campaigns', 'send-transactional-emails','feedback-loop-handler', 'bounce-handler', 'process-delivery-and-bounce-log','daily'];

if (!isset($_GET['key']) || ! isset($_GET['command']) || $key != 'my-key' || !in_array($command, $validCommands))
{
 echo "error";
 return;
}

exec('/path/to/php -f /path/to/mailwizz/apps/console/console.php '. $command);

Hi, since we had a similar issue we wanted to share this super simple script that you can place in web root. With this you can trigger cron with HTTP requests with URLs like:

http://www.my-mailwizz.com/cron.php?key=my-key&command=send-campaigns

 

[twisted1919]

@HostingTEK - Yeah but you'd still do it from the browser which in turn might timeout while processing a heavy campaign...

 

[HostingTEK]

@twisted1919 why would you trigger from a browser? web crons usually use wget/curl with properly set timeouts.

 

[OptiBiz1]

I think @twisted1919 meant that it could be used like that. I was actually thinking the same at first. But knowing it should not be run from the browser makes it an alternative to think of.

 

[frm.mwz]

Even if you use the browser triggered send-campaigns,
it will still be object to timeouts, and these timeouts might kick-in more oft for heavy campaigns, so this method is not really reliable and hence rather not an alternative to crons...that is what I read out of the above.

One could try to adjust the load to make all runs light, if there is no way to run a normal cron, but it is not a guarantee for a smooth mwz operation.

Hope that helps.

 

[twisted1919]

@twisted1919 why would you trigger from a browser? web crons usually use wget/curl with properly set timeouts.

It's basically same thing.