[Dxspider-support] Local announcement not appearing to users

[Keith Maton]

Hey all,

My node is going to be down for a few hours next week and I wanted to set up an announcement in my cron to let people know.

I set up a single line like this and it worked.

But it only worked once.

20 * * * * run_cmd("Announce Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June 07:00z-14:00z”)

The announcement only appeared on connected users once.

So I figured that perhaps there’s some kind of de-duplication to block the same announcement from appearing multiple times.

To get around this, I changed the wording slightly and edited my crontab accordingly to send the two announcements alternately, one hour apart.

20 01,03,05,07,09,11,13,15,17,19,21,23 * * * run_cmd("Announce Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June 07:00z-14:00z")

20 02,04,06,08,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,00 * * * run_cmd("Announce Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June from 07:00z to 14:00z”)

Watching my debug log at 11:20z, the following appeared.

1717845601^(cron) cron: LOCALTIME 20 12 8 6 6 -> doing 'run_cmd("Announce Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June from 07:00z to 14:00z")'
1717845601^(cron) DXCron::run_cmd: Announce Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June from 07:00z to 14:00z
1717845601^(progress) ANNTALK: G6NHU-2 at G6NHU-2 via LOCAL -> * 'Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June from 07:00z to 14:00z' route: G6NHU-2
1717845601^(progress) CMD: 'Announce Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June from 07:00z to 14:00z' by G6NHU-2 ip: 127.0.0.1 10mS

And the announcement showed in my console window.

To LOCAL de G6NHU-2: Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June from 07:00z to 14:00z

An hour later, the following showed in my debug log at 12:20z.

1717849201^(cron) cron: LOCALTIME 20 13 8 6 6 -> doing 'run_cmd("Announce Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June 07:00z-14:00z")'
1717849201^(cron) DXCron::run_cmd: Announce Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June 07:00z-14:00z
1717849201^(progress) ANNTALK: G6NHU-2 at G6NHU-2 via LOCAL -> * 'Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June 07:00z-14:00z' route: G6NHU-2
1717849201^(progress) CMD: 'Announce Downtime for G6NHU-2 on 10th June 07:00z-14:00z' by G6NHU-2 ip: 127.0.0.1 2mS

But nothing showed in my console window and the client I have logged on didn’t show the announcement.

Crontab is processing the announcement correctly but it’s not being showed to connected users.

Is this an intentional de-duplication or is something broken?  If the former, it’s not working quite properly because the text isn’t identical.

I’ve now changed the wording even more to see if it makes any difference.

73 Keith