Sandbox an Instance

Trying to upgrade? Check out our step-by-step guide on how to upgrade.

When testing or debugging a production instance, you may want to sandbox the application to prevent it from sending emails, depositing data with third-party services, or performing other unwanted tasks. This section will describe some tips to sandbox your install.

Send emails to the log #

All emails sent by the application can be routed to the server’s error log. When this is done, no emails will be sent out.

Find and edit the following setting in the [email] section of config.inc.php.

default = log

Disable scheduled tasks #

Scheduled tasks are run at regular intervals to send out reminder emails, deposit data with third-party services, and perform other tasks. They may be triggered in a couple different ways, depending how you configured them.

If you have a cron job set up to run the following command, delete that cron job.

php tools/runScheduledTasks.php

If you have the acron plugin installed, remove it by running the following command in the root directory of the application.

rm -rf plugins/generic/acron
rm -rf lib/pkp/plugins/generic/acron

Disable jobs #

Stop the job runner in order to prevent pending jobs like data deposits from being run. Turn the built-in job runner off in config.inc.php.

job_runner = Off

Depending on how you configured your server to run jobs, you may need to take additional steps.

If you are using workers to process jobs, kill those processes. You may need to disable Supervisor or any process monitor that will restart the workers.

If you are using a cron job to run the following command, delete that cron job.

php lib/pkp/tools/jobs.php run

Disabling jobs will stop some functionality from running. For example, the search index will not be rebuilt when submissions are published or unpublished. Jobs will pile up without being processed. Read how to monitor jobs.

Anonymize user emails #

Warning: These queries will permanently alter your data. Make sure you have a backup!

Run the following SQL query on the database to set all user account emails to a dummy account.

UPDATE users SET email=CONCAT(username,'@mailinator.com');

Run the following SQL query on the database to set all author account emails to a dummy account.

UPDATE authors SET email = 'test@mailinator.com';