How to run cron more often than every hour?

Question

I'd like to run cron every 5 minutes, but the UI doesn't offer any increment of time smaller than an hour. I'm assuming the solution is as simple as

• creating a feature module for the setting, and changing the integer to 300 (60 seconds × 5), OR
• cracking open the database and changing the value to 300.

Are there any hidden 'gotchas' with either of those approaches (or any reason they'll fail)? Is there a better way?

Answer 1

You can get really fine-grained control over your cron runs with these modules:

• Elyisa cron

  Elysia Cron extends Drupal standard cron, allowing a fine grain control over each task and several ways to add custom cron jobs to your site.

• Ultimate Cron

  The Ultimate Cron handling for Drupal. Runs cron jobs individually in parallel using configurable rules, pool management and load balancing.

(In no particular order) I've only used Elysia cron before, and only recently at that, but it works well.

Either module will let you use a standard cron rule to define it's frequency, which I think means you can get the granularity down as far as seconds if you need it.

I think the only gotcha is that the more often you run cron (if it has expensive tasks to perform), the more load there will be on your server. Testing and benchmarking are the only real way to solve that one :)

Answer 2

You can also just run a cron job from the server. If Cpanel is in use, it's simple to run cron.php on any schedule.

Answer 3

I have another option, if you are ok using the stock "automated cron" (aka poor man's cron) module that comes with drupal, which I'm assuming based on the question, you are.

You can set the interval for cron using settings.php.

In drupal 7

$conf['cron_safe_threshold'] = 300;

In drupal 8+

$config['automated_cron.settings']['interval'] = 300;

Obviously, do to the nature of the way the Drupal automated cron works, this wouldn't garentee the cron to be run every 5 minutes, but instead would be run on the next visit to any page that hit Drupal after 5 minutes have pasted since the last run. This is also true with the standard settings but at larger intervals obviously. This does mean if you do have edge caching like varnish in front or simply little traffic to the site, this may not be ideal.

Also, given the setting is set via settings.php, the drop down will no longer show the correct value and may be misleading to another developer or administrator.