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Curator runs many tasks in the background — syncing users, warming caches, importing data, cleaning up old records, and more. Each background task is recorded as a “queued process” so you can see what is currently running, what is waiting to run, and what has errored out. The Queued Processes list is the place to monitor and manage that queue.

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Viewing Queued Processes

  1. Navigate to your Curator backend > Settings > Curator > Queued Processes.
  2. The list displays each job with its type, status (for example, “Pending”, “Running”, “Complete”, or an error status), and timestamps for when it was created and last updated.
  3. Use the “Refresh List” button in the toolbar to reload the list and see the latest status.

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Clearing Queued Processes

The toolbar above the list provides three actions for removing jobs from the queue: Use “Cancel Selected” when you want to remove a small number of specific jobs without affecting the rest of the queue. Use “Clear Pending” when pending jobs are stuck or piling up and you want a clean slate before the next scheduled run. Use “Clear Errors” once you have reviewed the failures and no longer need the records for troubleshooting. Each button asks for confirmation before deleting. Removing a job only deletes the queue record — it does not undo any work the job already performed.

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Automatic Cleanup

Curator automatically prunes old queued process records once per day so the list does not grow indefinitely. The daily cleanup task removes any job whose last update was more than three days ago, regardless of status. Recent jobs — including pending ones — are left in place so that in-flight work is not interrupted. If you want to remove jobs sooner than the three-day window, use the toolbar actions described above.

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Troubleshooting a Queue That Is Not Processing

A healthy queue empties quickly. Curator’s scheduled task runs once a minute, picks up every job whose “Run After” time has passed, and works through them one at a time. Pending jobs normally disappear within a minute or two of being created. If the Pending count keeps growing, work through the steps below in order.

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Step 1: Confirm the scheduled task is firing

Every background job in Curator depends on a server-level scheduled task (cron on Linux, Task Scheduler on Windows) that runs artisan schedule:run once a minute. If that task stops, nothing in the queue moves.
  1. Open the backend Dashboard and find Last Cron Run in the Curator Status widget. It should read a minute or two ago. A warning icon appears once the value is more than 24 hours old, and the Dashboard also shows a “Curator’s Job System (cron) is not correctly configured” warning.
  2. If the timestamp is old or missing, fix the scheduled task before doing anything else. See Linux Cron Troubleshooting or Windows Cron Troubleshooting.
Firing the Portal > cron API endpoint by hand (see “Test Cron” in the Linux guide) runs a single pass of the schedule. A “success” response only means Curator received the request and finished that pass. It does not prove the server task is firing on its own, and one pass processes about a minute of queued work at most. Use the Last Cron Run timestamp, not the endpoint response, to judge whether the schedule is healthy.

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Step 2: Check whether one job is holding the queue

Only one queue worker runs at a time, and it processes jobs one after another. A single long job, such as a full backup of a large webroot, a large user sync, or a big import, keeps every job behind it in Pending until it finishes.
  1. Look for a job whose status is not “Pending”. A job the worker has picked up shows “Claimed”, a step description such as “Step 1 of 3: Backing up the Curator filesystem.”, or a percentage.
  2. Watch its Updated At value across a few refreshes. If it keeps advancing, the job is still working. Leave it alone; the Pending jobs follow once it finishes. Some jobs, such as backups, only update their status when they move to the next step, so a long gap on its own does not mean the job is dead.
  3. If the job appears stuck, open the Event Log (Settings > Logs > Event Log) and search for “Curator’s queue shut down prematurely”. That entry means the worker died while running the job, for example because it ran out of memory or was killed by the operating system, and it includes the underlying error. Fix the cause if the entry names one, then remove the dead job with Cancel Selected. Curator requeues import jobs on its own; every other job type keeps its last status until you remove it or the daily cleanup does. A dead job does not block the queue by itself, so the remaining Pending jobs continue on the next pass.

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Step 3: Wait out the queue lock

Curator uses a lock to stop two queue workers from running at the same time. When a worker is killed without warning, the lock can outlive it, and every pass until it expires skips the queue even though the scheduled task is firing. The lock expires on its own, normally 60 minutes after the run started. If you cannot wait, you can release the lock yourself, but only once you have confirmed that the worker that took it is no longer running. Use the checks in Step 2: the job it was running has stopped advancing its Updated At value, and the Event Log holds a “Curator’s queue shut down prematurely” entry for it. If either check fails, the worker may still be working, so wait for the lock to expire instead. Once you are sure the worker is dead, call the /portal/flushAllCache API endpoint. Clear Cache in the backend does not release the lock; this endpoint does. It works on both Curator SaaS and On-Prem:
To generate the link with your key filled in, follow the Auto Generate API Links instructions and set the dropdowns to Portal and flushAllCache. The next scheduled pass, normally within a minute, starts a fresh worker. The endpoint flushes the whole cache, so the next few page loads are slower while Curator rebuilds it and compiles the theme CSS again.
Do not remove the lock while a worker is still active. The next scheduled pass would start a second worker beside it. The two workers never pick up the same job, because each job is claimed with a single atomic database update, but they do process different jobs at the same time, which is exactly what the lock exists to prevent. Two backups, for example, could then run at once.

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Step 4: Turn on Cron Debug Mode

If the schedule is firing and nothing above explains the backlog, turn on Cron Debug Mode to see what the worker does on each pass.
  1. Navigate to Settings > Curator > Portal Settings and open the General tab.
  2. In the Debug Settings section, turn on Cron Debug Mode and click Save. The mode turns itself off after 24 hours unless you change Expiration of Cron Debug Mode.
  3. Wait a couple of minutes, then open the Event Log and look for entries that begin with “CRON DEBUG MODE”.
Each pass logs “Updating cron last run timestamp” when the schedule fires and “Running queued task” each time the worker picks up a job. If the timestamp entries appear but no “Running queued task” entries follow, the worker is not reaching the queue and the lock in Step 3 is the most likely cause. If a “Running queued task” entry appears and nothing follows it, that job is the one holding the queue.

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Step 5: Clear the backlog

When a job fails with an error, Curator writes the full error to the Event Log as “Error while running queued process” and, for most job types, removes the job from the list. Jobs that stay in the list with a status beginning with “Error:” can be removed with Clear Errors once you have read the log. If the queue is draining again but the backlog is too large to be useful, or the pending work is no longer wanted, use Clear Pending to remove every Pending job and start fresh.
Clear Pending deletes every Pending job. Work that a schedule queued, such as a scheduled backup, a user sync, or cache warming, is queued again at its next scheduled time. Work that a person started, such as an import or a backup taken with Take New Backup, is not, so start it again once the queue is draining.

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Troubleshooting Backups That Stay Pending or Never Appear

Curator runs every full backup through this queue. A scheduled backup adds a “Curator Backup” job at the configured time, and Take New Backup on the Backups page adds the same job immediately. If the queue is not processing, the backup waits in Pending with everything else, so work through the section above first. Two backups queued back to back run one after the other, never at the same time. While a backup runs, its status moves through “Step 1 of 3: Backing up the Curator filesystem.”, “Step 2 of 3: Backing up the Curator database.” and “Step 3 of 3: Packaging the full backup file.” Step 1 can take a long time on a large webroot. When the backup finishes, the job is removed from the list and the new file appears under Settings > Curator > Backups. If the job disappears from the list but no new backup appears, or the new file name ends in _NO_DATABASE, the backup failed part way through. Curator writes the reason to the Event Log. The common causes are: ERROR: Not enough space for full backup. Free disk space on the server is smaller than the size of the last backup. Free up space or lower Backup Retention, then take a new backup. See Curator Backup. ERROR: Unable to backup Curator files: <path> is not writable. The web-server user cannot write to the Backup Location (<web root>/storage/temp by default). Grant the web-server user write permission to that folder, or point Backup Location at a folder it can write to. Unable to find mysqldump executable. Check that it has been added to PATH environment variable. mysqldump is not on the PATH of the account that runs the scheduled task. The backup still completes, but without the database, and the file name ends in _NO_DATABASE. Install the MySQL client tools and add them to the PATH of the account that runs schedule:run (the Task Scheduler account on Windows), then take a new backup. ERROR: Unable to dump Curator database during backup mysqldump ran but failed, or produced a file smaller than 100 KB. The log entry lists the dump file path and size. Confirm the database credentials in Curator’s configuration work from the Curator server, and that the installed mysqldump matches the database server version. A backup whose name ends in _NO_DATABASE shows “Does not include a database export!” in the Backups list and cannot restore the database. Fix the database cause and take a new backup. On Curator SaaS, InterWorks manages the server, its disk space, and backup storage. If a scheduled backup stays Pending after the queue is confirmed healthy, or the Event Log shows one of the errors above, contact InterWorks support.