I created a job that would set a flag on startup, wait 5 minutes, and reset the flag again - for other jobs to check to be sure the system has finished initializing before they attempt to run.

However, I see that my 5 minute wait is not really waiting for 5 minutes (I've removed log messages not relevant to this issue):

10/12/2010 8:06:48 PM Info Job started: Set and Reset Startup Pending Flag
10/12/2010 8:06:48 PM Debug Server certificate read
10/12/2010 8:06:48 PM Debug VisualCron - Server starting on port: 16444
10/12/2010 8:06:48 PM Info Task started: Set Startup Flag (1)
10/12/2010 8:06:49 PM Debug Saving Variables
10/12/2010 8:06:49 PM Debug Saving Variables
10/12/2010 8:06:49 PM Info Variable 'startup_pending_flag' was updated to: 1
10/12/2010 8:06:49 PM Info Task completed: Set Startup Flag (1)
10/12/2010 8:06:49 PM Info Task started: Wait 5 minutes (4)
10/12/2010 8:07:29 PM Debug Saving Jobs
10/12/2010 8:10:40 PM Info Task completed: Wait 5 minutes (4)
10/12/2010 8:10:40 PM Info Task started: Reset Startup Flag (5)
10/12/2010 8:10:40 PM Debug Saving Variables
10/12/2010 8:10:40 PM Debug Saving Variables
10/12/2010 8:10:40 PM Info Variable 'startup_pending_flag' was updated to: 0
10/12/2010 8:10:40 PM Info Task completed: Reset Startup Flag (5)
10/12/2010 8:10:40 PM Info Job completed: Set and Reset Startup Pending Flag

The wait is actually slightly less than 4 minutes. Is this to be expected? How does VisualCron' Wait task track time?

Thanks,

Rebeccah

It should be very exact. Are you using 5 minutes or 300 seconds?

Try running it again and look at Execution time of Task/Job.

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I increased the wait time to 6 minutes back then, and looking now, the last execution time is a smidge over 6 minutes. How accurate are the timestamps on the log messages? Perhaps I'm being misled by those?

Rebeccah

They should be accurate. But perhaps two were running at same time?

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Two what?
The log you are seeing is what was triggered at system startup. There should only be one instance of anything related to VisualCron running at that time.

Rebeccah

I was thinking about two Jobs starting but that is probably not the case if you use that Trigger. What is more likely is that the Server synced against a time server and updated time during startup.

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That is certainly possible. In any case, increasing the delay to 6 minutes (from 5 minutes) has eliminated the symptom I was having on reboots, of VC jobs attempting to start before the server has completed booting, and not being able to find the files required.