repeated could_not_set errors

  • Resolved leorwalker

    (@leorwalker)


    5 months, 4 weeks ago

    My error_log is receiving error messages 4-8 times a day like the following:

    [29-Sep-2025 23:23:54 UTC] Cron reschedule event error for hook: action_scheduler_run_queue, Error code: could_not_set, Error message: The cron event list could not be saved., Data: {“schedule”:”every_minute”,”args”:[“WP Cron”],”interval”:60}

    [29-Sep-2025 23:23:54 UTC] Cron reschedule event error for hook: jetpack_sync_full_cron, Error code: could_not_set, Error message: The cron event list could not be saved., Data: {“schedule”:”jetpack_sync_interval”,”args”:[],”interval”:300}

    [01-Oct-2025 11:47:09 UTC] Cron unschedule event error for hook: epc_scheduled_purge_all, Error code: could_not_set, Error message: The cron event list could not be saved., Data: {“schedule”:false,”args”:[]}

    Does this point to some underlying problem?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author John Blackbourn

    (@johnbillion)

    WordPress Core Developer

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    Unfortunately this is a somewhat common but as yet unresolved issue in the WordPress core software. It’s nothing specific to WP Crontrol.

    There are a bunch of previous threads on the wordpress.org support forums but I don’t know if any of them will be useful to you unless the root cause has been identified.

    Thread Starter leorwalker

    (@leorwalker)

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    Thank you for the prompt response and the link to relevant information. When I get a chance, I’ll muck around with the core files on a dev site to see if I can isolate the issue further.

    Thread Starter leorwalker

    (@leorwalker)

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    As an FYI and for closure, I added some instrumentation to cron.php and option.php (which is called from cron.php to set the schedules) to figure out what is actually happening.

    In the majority of cases, _set_cron_array is throwing a WP_Error when update_option returns false due to the schedule already being present. There is no actual db error, no db rows affected, and there was a well-formed UPDATE query. The data was just already there.

    In a small number of cases, there were concurrent attempts to update the db. In all the cases I saw, the correct data was ultimately written, but a could_not_set error was thrown along the way.

    Bottomline: everything appears to be functioning properly, other than accurate diagnosis and logging of the result. Perhaps a small change in cron.php to rule out the false positives before logging a could_not_set error would be helpful.

    If anyone is in a position to do anything about this, if anything is in fact warranted, feel free to reach out to me as needed.

    Thank you.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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