HTTP request status fails, but update checking works manually

Question

I have a problem with my Drupal 7 (multi-site) installation on a root-server. The HTTP request status shows "failed" on the status page. However, I am able to check for updates manually when logged in without a problem, so Drupal actually is allowed to access other sites.

I am having problems with automatic update-checks via cron though. Sometimes they work, sometimes they work only partially. This results in an error-report being sent sometimes via email, which is quite annoying since I only want this for security updates.

Does anyone know how to solve this? We do have a root-server, however I'm not the admin and other non-drupal sites run on it too, so I can't just play around with server-settings, I would have to request changes (I can see phpInfo() though, if that helps).

The weird thing is that updates do work manually, and at least partially when checked via cron (I also disabled any external cron-job, so it's only triggered via poor-man's-cron). Could it be a Drupal core problem after all, maybe related to this: https://drupal.org/node/965078?

-- Drupal 7.27, all modules up-to-date

Answer 1

This is most likely caused by an old issue, a time-out of 5 seconds which is easily exceeded when checking for updates via poor-man's cron on sites with more than a few modules. See this issue.

Easiest solution is probably to use real cron jobs if possible to avoid this altogether, although there are other suggestions on the linked site. Drupal 7.28 finally increased the limit to 30 seconds, in many cases this might suffice. However it may lead to a page load slow-down, so imho it's better to avoid poor man's cron.