The DynamicLifeline plugin uses producer records to periodically rescues orphaned jobs, i.e. jobs that are stuck in the executing state because the node was shut down before the job could finish.

Without DynamicLifeline you'll need to manually rescue jobs stuck in the executing state.

using-the-plugin

Using the Plugin

To use the DynamicLifeline plugin, add the module to your list of Oban plugins in config.exs:

config :my_app, Oban,
  plugins: [Oban.Pro.Plugins.DynamicLifeline]
  ...

There isn't any configuration necessary. By default, the plugin rescues orphaned jobs every 1 minute. If necessary, you can override the rescue interval:

plugins: [{Oban.Pro.Plugins.DynamicLifeline, rescue_interval: :timer.minutes(5)}]

Note that rescuing orphans relies on producer records as used by the SmartEngine.

rescuing-exhausted-jobs

Rescuing Exhausted Jobs

When a job's attempt matches its max_attempts its retries are considered "exhausted". Normally, the DynamicLifeline plugin transitions exhausted jobs to the discarded state and they won't be retried again. It does this for a couple of reasons:

1. To ensure at-most-once semantics. Suppose a long-running job interacted with a non-idempotent service and was shut down while waiting for a reply; you may not want that job to retry.
2. To prevent infinitely crashing BEAM nodes. Poorly behaving jobs may crash the node (through NIFs, memory exhaustion, etc.) We don't want to repeatedly rescue and rerun a job that repeatedly crashes the entire node.

Discarding exhausted jobs may not always be desired. Use the retry_exhausted option if you'd prefer to retry exhausted jobs when they are rescued, rather than discarding them:

plugins: [{Oban.Pro.Plugins.DynamicLifeline, retry_exhausted: true}]

During rescues, with retry_exhausted: true, a job's max_attempts is incremented and it is moved back to the available state.

instrumenting-with-telemetry

Instrumenting with Telemetry

The DynamicLifeline plugin adds the following metadata to the [:oban, :plugin, :stop] event:

• :rescued_jobs — a list of jobs transitioned back to available

• :discarded_jobs — a list of jobs transitioned to discarded

Note: jobs only include id, queue, state, and worker fields.

See the docs on Plugin Events for details.