You may receive an email with the following message at regular intervals:
The cron has run within the last 24 hours. To force the cron to run all operations immediately, please invoke with the following arguments "all --force".
This message is not a cause for concern.
WHMCS will perform certain key automation tasks once per day such as generating renewal invoices and sending payment reminder emails. These daily tasks are performed during the hour selected in the Time of Day setting under Setup > Automation Settings.
Other tasks may be performed more frequently which is why we recommend configuring the cron job schedule to execute the cron.php file every 5 minutes.
Every time the cron.php file is executed, WHMCS checks to see whether the daily automation tasks were completed in the previous 24 hours. If they have not been completed, and the current time is within your Time of Day setting, the daily automation tasks will be performed.
If the daily tasks have been performed in the past 24 hours, the software knows not to try executing them again, and so outputs the "The cron has run within the last 24 hours...." message.
Depending upon individual server configurations this message may be sent via email, which could become bothersome if multiple copies are received per day. On cPanel servers this can easily be stopped:
- Login to cPanel and click "Cron Jobs"
- Under the "Cron Email" heading, delete the contents of the Email field
- Click Update Email
- Click "Ok" in the dialogue box to confirm.
Other control panels may have a similar option. Alternatively the output can be suppressed by affixing the following code to the end of the con job command:
>/dev/null
So the full cron job command might look something like:
php -q /path/to/home/public_html/whmcspath/crons/cron.php >/dev/null
