Perform upgrade Confirm no errors Login as admin Navigate to Site admin > Server > Tasks > Task processing Confirm that the default value of the cron_keepalive setting is 3 minutes Enable cron via Web interface: Go to Site security settings Uncheck Cron execution via command line only (cronclionly) Navigate to http://yoursite/admin/cron.php Confirm that the cron output some content Jump to the bottom of the output Find the line which starts " Cron completed " Confirm that it did not include a "Continuing to check" message in it Open a Terminal Run the CLI cron runner: php admin/cli/cron.php Confirm that the cron output some content Jump to the bottom of the output Find the line which starts " Cron completed " Confirm that it did include a "Continuing to check" message in it, for example: Cron completed at 08:25:08 in 0.680058 seconds. Memory used: 42.0 MB. Continuing to check for tasks for 58 more seconds. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The task should keep repeating and the cron should keep checking for tasks for those 3 minutes. Confirm that it does so Confirm that when the timer runs out, the runner exits In the UI, find the cron_keepalive setting again Try to set it to -1 seconds and save changes Confirm that you got a "Too low" message Try to set it to 55 minutes and save changes Confirm that you got a "Too high" message Set it to five seconds and save changes Confirm that the setting was saved Run the CLI cron runner again Confirm that the runner only ran for five seconds and exited Run cron and specify a keep-alive value: php admin/cli/cron.php --keep-alive=10 Confirm that the runner only ran for 10 seconds and exited Specify a no-keep-alive option: php admin/cli/cron.php --no-keep-alive Confirm that the cron ran once, and exited Specify an empty value: php admin/cli/cron.php --keep-alive=0 Confirm that the cron ran once, and exited Specify a negative value: php admin/cli/cron.php --keep-alive=-4 Confirm that the cron ran once, and exited Specify a high value: php admin/cli/cron.php --keep-alive=999 Confirm that you were shown a warning message : Cron keepalive time is too long, reducing to 15 minutes. Confirm that the cron run had a 15 minute time (900 seconds), Note: You can hit Control+C to cancel early rather than waiting for the full 15 minutes. Run again and wait for the "Continuing to check..." message As soon as it comes up, press Ctrl+C Confirm that you were shown a graceful exit message == Exiting gracefully, please wait ... == Confirm that it exists basically immediately Install the attached moodle-local_crontest-arn.php into local/crontest Run two copies of the cron runner wtih a keepalive of 3 minutes and space them apart slightly (i.e. 30 seconds between starting each) Run local/crontest/cli/add_adhoc.php Confirm that one of the cron runners picks up the first task Confirm that a few seconds later the second runner picks up the second task