[buddypress-trac] [BuddyPress] #4792: bp_activity_akismet_delete_old_metadata is NOT firing in WP-cron, leading to massive potential DB bloat.

[buddypress-trac]

#4792: bp_activity_akismet_delete_old_metadata is NOT firing in WP-cron, leading
to massive potential DB bloat.
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 Reporter:  rossagrant    |      Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal        |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Core          |    Version:
 Severity:  normal        |   Keywords:
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 Creating a ticket after replicating this issue on 3 separate installs of
 BP and WP.

 It appears that the wp-cron job bp_activity_akismet_delete_old_metadata
 ISN'T firing on any BP installs.

 I can't track back to at which version this began being a problem
 unfortunately, but it wasn't an issue in BP 1.5 from what I can remember.

 Steps to replicate:

 - Install BP 1.6.x and WP 3.5
 - Now to see which jobs are in cron, you're going to need a backend plugin
 such as the very stable WP-Cron dashboard -
 http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cron-dashboard/ (not been updated
 for a while, but works just fine).
 - You'll see all of the jobs in cron, but you'll notice that
 bp_activity_akismet_delete_old_metadata has a big X next to it saying "X -
 no action exists with this name".

 - Now of course, I first thought this could be a plugin not reading the
 job properly, but after inspecting the DB and the activity_meta entries
 table, NO daily clear-outs of this table have been made in months.

 This cron job should run once daily to empty the meta table which contains
 all sorts of stuff such as Akismet calls for the activity stream (when the
 option is checked to use Akismet in the backend.)

 However there is an actual error with the Akismet option, which was
 reported in this thread here:

 http://buddypress.org/support/topic/big-akismet-problems/#post-150988

 So even when the Akismet box for BP in the options is UNCHECKED, Akismet
 is STILL queried for the activity stream.

 There is a separate ticket for this issue and it doesn't affect the main
 issue of the job not firing:

 See here: http://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4773

 As further proof that the cron job is not firing, the user in that ticket
 also reports that he has 25k meta entries that IF THIS CRON WAS WORKING
 would have been cleared out regardless of the Akismet bug.

 So we need to find out what has gone wrong with this action and why it
 isn't firing.

 It will have gone unnoticed for ages as unless you check wp-cron with a
 plugin or look at your DB regularly, you would never have noticed anything
 odd.

 I have replicated this on 3 separate server environments, so I'm confident
 it's not server related or plugin related as I've tried it on a vanilla
 install in BP-Default with NO plugins.

 If you need me to test anything at all, please shout up! :)

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Ticket URL: <https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4792>
BuddyPress <http://buddypress.org/>
BuddyPress