News stops showing updates for feeds if one or more RSS source is broken

[marcxm]

Just like in the title. Note that other news readers [Miniflux, TT-RSS, etc], which have the same OPML RSS list loaded, do not stop updating feeds, but show which ones are broken.
I must note that cron works just fine - as I can see in Settings page ["last cron job executed 5 minutes ago"].

I think this is a show stopper [literally] in News app.

My environment:

• Kubernetes k0s cluster:

Client Version: v1.25.0
Kustomize Version: v4.5.7
Server Version: v1.24.8+k0s

• Nextcloud helm chart:

nextcloud https://nextcloud.github.io/helm/
nextcloud nextcloud 1 2022-12-11 11:56:43.024582498 +0100 CET deployed nextcloud-3.3.3 25.0.1

news app version: 19.0.0

I cannot show you any errors from containers, because I don't see any errors really. However, I do know that other RSS readers continue show updates for feeds, only omitting broken RSS sources, while Nextcloud News stops updating them completely.

[SMillerDev]

Without any logs that's impossible to reproduce.

[marcxm]

nextcloud.log:

{"reqId":"ZAtqukgbHvzVybTb5NvI","level":3,"time":"2022-12-12T10:35:48+00:00","remoteAddr":"","user":"--","app":"PHP","method":"","url":"--","message":"strtolower(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated at /var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Fetcher/FeedFetcher.php#205","userAgent":"--","version":"25.0.1.1","exception":{"Exception":"Error","Message":"strtolower(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated at /var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Fetcher/FeedFetcher.php#205","Code":0,"Trace":[{"function":"onError","class":"OC\\Log\\ErrorHandler","type":"::","args":[8192,"strtolower(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated","/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Fetcher/FeedFetcher.php",205]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Fetcher/FeedFetcher.php","line":205,"function":"strtolower","args":[null]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Fetcher/FeedFetcher.php","line":135,"function":"determineRtl","class":"OCA\\News\\Fetcher\\FeedFetcher","type":"->","args":[{"__class__":"FeedIo\\Feed"}]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Service/FeedServiceV2.php","line":270,"function":"fetch","class":"OCA\\News\\Fetcher\\FeedFetcher","type":"->","args":["https://www.howtoforge.com/feed.rss",false,null,null]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Service/FeedServiceV2.php","line":347,"function":"fetch","class":"OCA\\News\\Service\\FeedServiceV2","type":"->","args":[{"__class__":"OCA\\News\\Db\\Feed","id":36,"items":[]}]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Service/UpdaterService.php","line":55,"function":"fetchAll","class":"OCA\\News\\Service\\FeedServiceV2","type":"->","args":[]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Cron/UpdaterJob.php","line":74,"function":"update","class":"OCA\\News\\Service\\UpdaterService","type":"->","args":["*** sensitive parameters replaced ***"]},{"file":"/var/www/html/lib/public/BackgroundJob/Job.php","line":78,"function":"run","class":"OCA\\News\\Cron\\UpdaterJob","type":"->","args":[null]},{"file":"/var/www/html/lib/public/BackgroundJob/TimedJob.php","line":103,"function":"start","class":"OCP\\BackgroundJob\\Job","type":"->","args":[{"__class__":"OC\\BackgroundJob\\JobList"}]},{"file":"/var/www/html/lib/public/BackgroundJob/TimedJob.php","line":93,"function":"start","class":"OCP\\BackgroundJob\\TimedJob","type":"->","args":[{"__class__":"OC\\BackgroundJob\\JobList"}]},{"file":"/var/www/html/cron.php","line":152,"function":"execute","class":"OCP\\BackgroundJob\\TimedJob","type":"->","args":[{"__class__":"OC\\BackgroundJob\\JobList"},{"__class__":"OC\\Log"}]}],"File":"/var/www/html/lib/private/Log/ErrorHandler.php","Line":92,"CustomMessage":"--"}}
{"reqId":"ZAtqukgbHvzVybTb5NvI","level":3,"time":"2022-12-12T10:36:01+00:00","remoteAddr":"","user":"--","app":"PHP","method":"","url":"--","message":"strtolower(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated at /var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Fetcher/FeedFetcher.php#205","userAgent":"--","version":"25.0.1.1","exception":{"Exception":"Error","Message":"strtolower(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated at /var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Fetcher/FeedFetcher.php#205","Code":0,"Trace":[{"function":"onError","class":"OC\\Log\\ErrorHandler","type":"::","args":[8192,"strtolower(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated","/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Fetcher/FeedFetcher.php",205]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Fetcher/FeedFetcher.php","line":205,"function":"strtolower","args":[null]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Fetcher/FeedFetcher.php","line":135,"function":"determineRtl","class":"OCA\\News\\Fetcher\\FeedFetcher","type":"->","args":[{"__class__":"FeedIo\\Feed"}]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Service/FeedServiceV2.php","line":270,"function":"fetch","class":"OCA\\News\\Fetcher\\FeedFetcher","type":"->","args":["http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot",false,null,null]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Service/FeedServiceV2.php","line":347,"function":"fetch","class":"OCA\\News\\Service\\FeedServiceV2","type":"->","args":[{"__class__":"OCA\\News\\Db\\Feed","id":52,"items":[]}]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Service/UpdaterService.php","line":55,"function":"fetchAll","class":"OCA\\News\\Service\\FeedServiceV2","type":"->","args":[]},{"file":"/var/www/html/custom_apps/news/lib/Cron/UpdaterJob.php","line":74,"function":"update","class":"OCA\\News\\Service\\UpdaterService","type":"->","args":["*** sensitive parameters replaced ***"]},{"file":"/var/www/html/lib/public/BackgroundJob/Job.php","line":78,"function":"run","class":"OCA\\News\\Cron\\UpdaterJob","type":"->","args":[null]},{"file":"/var/www/html/lib/public/BackgroundJob/TimedJob.php","line":103,"function":"start","class":"OCP\\BackgroundJob\\Job","type":"->","args":[{"__class__":"OC\\BackgroundJob\\JobList"}]},{"file":"/var/www/html/lib/public/BackgroundJob/TimedJob.php","line":93,"function":"start","class":"OCP\\BackgroundJob\\TimedJob","type":"->","args":[{"__class__":"OC\\BackgroundJob\\JobList"}]},{"file":"/var/www/html/cron.php","line":152,"function":"execute","class":"OCP\\BackgroundJob\\TimedJob","type":"->","args":[{"__class__":"OC\\BackgroundJob\\JobList"},{"__class__":"OC\\Log"}]}],"File":"/var/www/html/lib/private/Log/ErrorHandler.php","Line":92,"CustomMessage":"--"}}

[Grotax]

That particular log is not related, it is just informing about a deprecation of that functionality meaning a future php version won't allow this anymore and throw an error.

[Grotax]

So there are I think two possible options.

News crashed in some unexpected way which causes the update process to fail.
But that should show some actual errors like dB failures in the logs. We did fix with the help of contributes more egde cases lately, so that hasn't happened anymore as far as I know.

Option two is that the update job is simply not executed by Nextcloud anymore.
That can happen if the job is started, which starts a php process if that process is interrupted the job never finishes.
To avoid parallel job execution Nextcloud stops new jobs from running and only unlocks them after 12 hours.

Ideally I guess, Nextcloud would provide a status information to the admin about all jobs and allowing manual triggers. Similar like in other software with such jobs.

In that case you can find some information in the faq in our docs how to manually fix that.

Since you run your instance in docker I can imagine that the whole system expects some sort of dynamic, starting stopping containers should not be a problem at any time.
Just that Nextcloud jobs do not support that.

I haven't seen any official way to make this better as an app, we already use the latest way to register and execute our job.
If I have time I will have another look if something changed.

Otherwise suggestions are generally welcome.

If some feeds do still update but others don't there must be some error somewhere and we need the log info

[marcxm]

I appreciate your comment and it's helpful. I'll keep a close look on logs and I'll upload it once the issue occurs again. I'll also see if I can switch to other form of cron job execution, even though - from what I can see currently - those are running fine, so I think it's more about broken RSS feeds blocking the whole feed update process for the app.