Add cron service

[shieldwed]

In order to keep things easy for image users (less additional config required), add cron service similar to wonderfall/nextcloud. This might require a service manager like s6. Nexcloud can be preconfigured to use cron automatically.

[SnowMB]

I fiddled around a while ago and found a solution using cron and supervisord.

https://github.com/SnowMB/docker/tree/adding_cron

Would that be sufficient?

[shieldwed]

Yes, certainly it gets the job done. I was thinking of doing something similar. You were just a tiny bit quicker.

[shieldwed]

Are you going to create a pull request?

[pierreozoux]

The philosophy of Docker is to have one process per container.
So we shouldn't use supervisord for instance.
The best is then to use a side process for this kind of tasks.
I agree it is not the simplest for the beginner end user.

As an official image, it is not possible to use supervisord.
This is a nice building block to build more complex setup.
In the context of kubernetes for instance, the cron tasks are native from the cluster solution.
It allows fine grain permission/resource allocation.
Once we have kubernetes support, it doesn't make sense to ship cron for kubernetes users.
For now, there is docker-compose support from myself and @SnowMB and it ships with cron.

I'm closing in favor of #37

[shieldwed]

@pierreozoux Thank you for pointing out, that there is no need to have cron within the image. You can use the external cron and docker exec just as well.

[Richie765]

You can also put something like this in your compose-file:

  cron:
    image: nextcloud:14.0.3
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - data:/var/www/html
    entrypoint: |
      bash -c 'bash -s <<EOF
      trap "break;exit" SIGHUP SIGINT SIGTERM
      while /bin/true; do
        su -s "/bin/bash" -c "/usr/local/bin/php /var/www/html/cron.php" www-data
        echo $$(date) - Running cron finished
        sleep 900
      done
      EOF'

[odalle]

You can also put something like this in your compose-file:

  cron:
    image: nextcloud:14.0.3
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - data:/var/www/html
    entrypoint: |
      bash -c 'bash -s <<EOF
      trap "break;exit" SIGHUP SIGINT SIGTERM
      while /bin/true; do
        su -s "/bin/bash" -c "/usr/local/bin/php /var/www/html/cron.php" www-data
        echo $$(date) - Running cron finished
        sleep 900
      done
      EOF'

It seems simple and easy. Thanks!

With example docker-compose/with-nginx-proxy/mariadb/fpm/, the docker-compose.yml just needs to be changed as follows to share the right volume and use same image:

cron:
    image: nextcloud:fpm
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - nextcloud:/var/www/html
    depends_on:
      - app
    entrypoint: |
      bash -c 'bash -s <<EOF
      trap "break;exit" SIGHUP SIGINT SIGTERM
      while /bin/true; do
        su -s "/bin/bash" -c "/usr/local/bin/php /var/www/html/cron.php" www-data
        echo $$(date) - Running cron finished
        sleep 900
      done
      EOF'

[snw35]

For those using the alpine-based fpm container, this works well:

  nc-cron:
      image: nextcloud:fpm-alpine
      restart: always
      volumes:
        - nc-dir:/var/www/html
      depends_on:
        - nc-fpm
      networks:
        - nc-backend
      entrypoint: |
        sh -c 'sh -s <<EOF
        trap "break;exit" SIGHUP SIGINT SIGTERM
        while /bin/true; do
          su -s "/bin/sh" -c "/usr/local/bin/php /var/www/html/cron.php" www-data
          echo $$(date) - Running cron finished
          sleep 900
        done
        EOF'

[chrstn-hntschl]

While this works for me, the $$(date) command seems to be evaluated only once so the log contains the same timestamp endlessly, which makes debugging a bit difficult. This is a bash question - so any idea how to improve on this?

[mintalicious]

There is a cron.sh script inside the nextcloud image which can be used. Have a look at the cron container inside https://github.com/nextcloud/docker/blob/master/.examples/docker-compose/with-nginx-proxy/mariadb-cron-redis/apache/docker-compose.yml

  cron:
    image: nextcloud:17
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - nextcloud:/var/www/html
    entrypoint: /cron.sh
    depends_on:
      - db

[Chartman123]

There is a cron.sh script inside the nextcloud image which can be used. Have a look at the cron container inside https://github.com/nextcloud/docker/blob/master/.examples/docker-compose/with-nginx-proxy/mariadb-cron-redis/apache/docker-compose.yml

  cron:
    image: nextcloud:17
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - nextcloud:/var/www/html
    entrypoint: /cron.sh
    depends_on:
      - db

I just tried this in my docker-compose, but Nextcloud tells me on the cron status page that the cron job isn't running. Is this normal? I can see the cron job running in the logs of the cron container.

[mintalicious]

There is a cron.sh script inside the nextcloud image which can be used. Have a look at the cron container inside https://github.com/nextcloud/docker/blob/master/.examples/docker-compose/with-nginx-proxy/mariadb-cron-redis/apache/docker-compose.yml

  cron:
    image: nextcloud:17
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - nextcloud:/var/www/html
    entrypoint: /cron.sh
    depends_on:
      - db

I just tried this in my docker-compose, but Nextcloud tells me on the cron status page that the cron job isn't running. Is this normal? I can see the cron job running in the logs of the cron container.

Hi, this is what's working for me (my complete docker-compose.yml):

version: '3' 

services:
  nextcloud:
    image: nextcloud:18
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./nextcloud_data:/var/www/html
    links:
      - mariadb
    environment:
      - VIRTUAL_HOST=nextcloud.example.com
      - LETSENCRYPT_HOST=nextcloud.example.com
    networks:
      - proxynet
      - backend

  cron:
    image: nextcloud:18
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./nextcloud_data:/var/www/html
    networks:
      - backend
    entrypoint: /cron.sh

  mariadb:
    image: mariadb
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=secret
    volumes:
      - ./mariadb_data:/var/lib/mysql
      - ./mariadb_config:/etc/mysql/conf.d
    networks:
      - backend

networks:
  backend:
  proxynet:
    external:
      name: webproxy

[Chartman123]

Thank you very much, my compose file was missing the nextcloud network 👍