Pimatic cron doesnt work until i login to web panel

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Hi there. I am new to pimatic, and try to get something works with cron plugin.

I installed mail plugin and cron plugin. I set up mail that works with my gmail account.
I wrote a rule, that send me mail every day at 22.15.

But this doesnt work when i am out of mobile-frontend for a while. (I mean if i dont login to panel for 1 day or 2 days…)
And when i login, it instantly sends me the mail, that have to be sent at 22.15.

It is hard to debug this situation as i have to wait 1-2 days to test an action

Only thing i had changed in raspi-config is boot option to B1 : Text-console , requiring user to login (for security reasons)

Can you help me?

These are the message log for you to understand my situation :

 
2016-12-09 23:33:09info [pimatic]: rule test-cron-mail-testing: mail sent with status: 250 2.0.0 OK 1481319189 e188sm22539126wma.21 - gsmtp
2016-12-08 22:15:02info [pimatic]: rule test-cron-mail-testing: mail sent with status: 250 2.0.0 OK 1481228102 w79sm16978302wmw.0 - gsmtp
2016-12-07 23:38:57info [pimatic]: rule test-cron-mail-testing: mail sent with status: 250 2.0.0 OK 1481146737 q7sm33474463wjh.9 - gsmtp
2016-12-06 22:15:01info [pimatic]: rule test-cron-mail-testing: mail sent with status: 250 2.0.0 OK 1481055301 b3sm27442265wjy.40 - gsmtp

How does you config look like?

• Mail-Plugin, rule for sending the mail?

in my config the mailplugin is working fine…

mine is working too. i am getting mails. But the cron is not working correctly. it is not about the mail plugin. But here you go : my plugins section here:

{
      "plugin": "mail",
      "transport": "SMTP",
      "transportOptions": {
        "service": "Gmail",
        "auth": {
          "user": "macitemre@gmail.com",
          "pass": "*********"
        }
      },
      "to": "macitemre@gmail.com",
      "active": true
    },
    {
      "plugin": "cron"
    }

did you already delete the pimatic-cron folder in /pimatic-app/node_modules/

So that pimatic is pulling them new by restarting?

no i did not delete that folder.

but as i mentioned, it works fine -when i am currently logged in, or recently logged in-. Message log shows that.

Hmm maybe this will help,
but maybe the problem is some where else because of your start-behavior off your pi.
i have mine in start to Pixel-Desktop…

but i have to require a user login, because of security reasons. Nobody may plug a monitor and hack my raspberry

it is not about loginng in. It is about requesting GUI. When i requested gui, the “late” mail come instantly.

i switched to DEsktop autologin mode. Unfortunately nothing has changed i need help.

You need to find out if its really Cron (I dont believe it)
Switch something every Minute or to a Time every Day.
Use a Lamp or connect a LED to a GPIO, something like that
Try this first.

@mwittig @sweetpi any help appreciated!!

i found a workaround that is really odd.

i inserted a cronjob command that requests 127.0.0.1 every minute.
* * * * * curl 127.0.0.1 > /dev/null 2>&1

And everything is fine now. (i had deep suspects about the sleeping of raspbian os, and struggled with that. but nothing changed, then i found this workaround. )

Any news on this? I think this is a really serious issue. I now also noticed this when I wanted to use an every 30 minutes trigger to take timelapse photos and was wondering why it only took photos for some time.

I think the solution above is just a very dirty workaround.

@sweetpi any ideas? The plugin should normally not be dependant on the web front-end at all? I can’t imagine where this comes from.

It looks like requesting the values of the attributes of the devices used in the rule does hang until the webfrontend does request them.

@macitemre could you post the full rule that is not working and all devices or device classes used in this rule?

Here it is the condition every 30 minutes the action is only shellexecute.

Any other ideas how to work around this as long as we don’t have a fix?

Hi all, I have exactly the same problem, a cron job is only executed after a login into the web panel

cron installed:

"plugins": [
    {
      "plugin": "cron"
    },

"rules": [
    {
      "id": "poort-open-maandag",
      "name": "Poort open maandag",
      "rule": "when it is Monday 12:15 then switch poort on",
      "active": true,
      "logging": true
    },

and this is from the event log:

I logged in at 12:28 to see is ‘poort’ was open, it opened on the login
The ‘poort’ device:

{
      "plugin": "gpio",
      "active": true
    },

( node.js module onoff is installed )

"devices": [
    {
      "gpio": 17,
      "id": "poort",
      "name": "Poort",
      "class": "GpioSwitch"
    }

A relais is connected to gpio 17, manually is everything working correctly.

When I copy an existing rule and change the time en stay logged in to see if it is executed, the rule is working.
The rasp is a fresh install of (headless) raspbian, on an older rasp on other location is everything working correctly.

Help needed!

Just added

* * * * * curl 127.0.0.1:9000 > /dev/null 2>&1

to crontab to test if that helps.
( Pimatic port = 9000 )

Rule:

    {
      "id": "poort-open-woensdag",
      "name": "poort open woensdag",
      "rule": "when it is Wednesday 14:00 then switch poort on",
      "active": true,
      "logging": true
    }

This solution is working for me, Pimatic in some kind of sleep mode?

Same problem for me.
Pimatic 0.9.38 installed in /home/user/pimatic-home/ on Raspberry PI 2

I am using this plugins:

• cron 0.8.8
• johnny-five 0.9.1
• mobile-frontend 0.9.11
• shell-execute 0.9.8
• sunrise 0.8.7

My time rules only start if my pimatic url is open in a browser.
If my rule starts at 6 o’clock nothing happens.
If i open at 7 o’clock my pimatic url then all rules from 6 o’clock starts…

I will use the dirty workarround with crontab.
But i prefere a solution inside pimatic in the future.

Sorry for my bad english.

Same kind of problem here

Curious about a “real” solution!