The staggered cron scheduling was completely broken due to bash subshell scope
issue. The pattern was:
cron_time=$(generate_staggered_cron) # Creates subshell!
This caused CRON_OFFSET to increment in the subshell but not persist to the
parent shell, resulting in ALL 200 sites getting cron time 0 * * * *.
BEFORE (broken):
All 200 sites → 0 * * * * (massive load spikes!)
AFTER (fixed):
Sites distributed as: 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, ... 57 (repeats)
200 sites: 10 sites per time slot (perfect distribution)
Solution: Changed from command substitution to global variable approach:
- generate_staggered_cron now sets LAST_CRON_TIME instead of echo
- Callers read $LAST_CRON_TIME after function call
- CRON_OFFSET increments now properly persist across loop iterations
Fixed three locations:
- Option 2: disable for domain
- Option 3: disable for user
- Option 4: disable server-wide
All 200 sites will now run with proper load distribution across the hour.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Haiku 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
cschantz
7034f7b797