XF 2.3 'New reply to watched thread' notifications sent out every 15 mins

[thomas1]

Since this morning, users who are watching or have participated in threads have been receiving the same notification email every 15 minutes.

Our xf_job table looks like this:



The unique_key is always 'NULL'. We deleted these jobs, but they are recreated once someone replies to the watched threads.

No changes were made to the DB or settings, and no new add-ons were installed.

We'd appreciate any pointers as to what to look for.

 

[Brad P]

Since this morning, users who are watching or have participated in threads have been receiving the same notification email every 15 minutes.

Our xf_job table looks like this:

View attachment 336283

The unique_key is always 'NULL'. We deleted these jobs, but they are recreated once someone replies to the watched threads.

No changes were made to the DB or settings, and no new add-ons were installed.

We'd appreciate any pointers as to what to look for.

That doesn’t look like a thread watch issue to me it’s more like the mail queue isn’t clearing properly.

Those XF:Job:MailSend jobs are what send out the emails in batches. If people are getting the same notification every 15 minutes, it usually means the job isn’t finishing and just keeps retrying, so the same emails get sent again.

A couple of things I’d check

• Make sure your cron is actually running properly (especially if you’re relying on web cron)
• Check if those jobs in xf_job are looping or racking up attempts
• Have a look at your mail setup (SMTP etc.) in case something is timing out or failing silently

The 15-minute gap lines up pretty closely with the default mail queue timing, which is why it feels like the same batch being retried rather than new notifications being created.

Even if you haven’t added anything recently, it might still be worth quickly disabling add-ons just to rule out anything interfering with mail.

 

[thomas1]

The 15-minute gap lines up pretty closely with the default mail queue timing, which is why it feels like the same batch being retried rather than new notifications being created.

I think that's exactly what happened on two XF instances on the same server.

Even if you haven’t added anything recently, it might still be worth quickly disabling add-ons just to rule out anything interfering with mail.

That's exactly what we did (it was also a good opportunity to get rid of several add-ons we no longer needed). After re-enabling them, the jobs stopped looping.

Thanks again @Brad P, and thanks to @AndyB as well!