Duplicate tickets created when running auto-cron

vee8

When running the auto-cron on the old 1.6 I never had any issues but since 1.7 RC6, I started to receive duplicate tickets. Worse thing is I upgraded to the stable release and went live in the hope it would be fixed only to discover that customers would get an autoresponce per duplicated ticket! So I have been trying all sorts of fixes including deactivating autoresponders, deleting mails once fetched, using imap instead of pop3, moving read mails to a folder, etc. I now use imap and move fetched mails to a 'viewed' folder (in other words, using the mailfetch function properly I expect!).

So the final fix has been via an external cron job but being the complete idiot that I am (with regards SSH/crontab/php/the meaning of life…), I could not get it to work AT ALL! So, I thought how about posting my experience as an ‘idiots guide' to setting up an external cron job. You see, I’m a graphic/web designer (not by trade ;) ) who can code in HTML, uses javascript effectively and can make some sense out of php but that’s it!! Put it this way, I figured that the IP you needed in order to create an API key would probably be the domain IP but I did not know for sure and my trial and error method took a little longer than expected. I had to learn about Putty, things like ‘crontab –l’, ‘’, etc… a real eye opener!!

Anyway, I use a 1and1 server and have been able to patch different recommendations from different people to come up with a final solution for me. In case it is of any use to anyone, I use the following for php-cgi:

*/7 * * * 1,2,3,4,5 wget --post-data ‘ ‘ –header=’X-API-Key: myAPIkey’ http://myDomain.com/myTicketFolder/api/tasks/cron

The reason why most of what has been written on the forum is no good for me is because 1and1 uses PHP-CGI and not CLI… or so I am told… maybe it's the other way round... you see, an idiot!

So for my fellow idiots out there. here's what I did:

First I did a domain IP search with my domain name so I could create the API Key.

Once created, I googled SSH to hell and ended up downloading Putty.

I made my way to my crontab (had to check with the hosting for my SSH access BTW) and using 'crontab –l' command, I found my crontab

Using 'crontab -e' and some other basic googled commands, y editted with the above code (well actually, this was the result of the 11th or 15th attempt!!!!)

Hit escape and typed to save my crontab file with the changes.

I then selected Enable POP/IMAP polling and left auto-cron off in osTicket.

Sat back and watched the tickets roll in one by one and NO DUPLICATES

Much happier now that I am using a recommeded setting and hope that this will be a happier system!

Note to mods: Please edit anything you feel might be confusing... I'm an idiot remember! :

ntozier

There were substantial changes from 1.7RC6 to 1.7ST in email handling. You should upgrade to the stable version and see if you still have the same problem.

vee8

I did, in the hope that the fault was an RC6 thing but on the ST it's the same deal as I not very clearly mention above. ;)

I also suspect that the web server we use has something to do with the fault. It's a bid rubbish at best of times and testing with a different mail on a totally different web server, no duplicates with auto-cron!

Not worried now that I have an external cron working which is definitely the way to go. :

jhfitness

We're also getting some duplicate tickets... They are created within the same minute of each other that also seems to correspond to when a user logs in in the morning and I presume the fetching runs (POP from Postfix on the same server, but host set to external domain name of the server), but it doesn't happen every day, and it doesn't seem to happen throughout the day either. Could it happen if two users log in about the same time? Or if one user hits a couple pages right after logging in?

ntozier

That sounds possible... if you are relying on Admin panel-> settings -> emails -> "Poll on auto-cron (Poll based on staff activity - NOT recommended)"