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Pancake Stack
ChaptersPancake Stack Manual
Getting started
  1. 1Welcome to Pancake
  2. 2A tour of the window
  3. 3Your first site
Building sites
  1. 4Working with sites
  2. 5Files, the editor and design
  3. 6Bringing sites in
  4. 7Databases
Sharing and publishing
  1. 8Putting sites online
  2. 9On my network and local HTTPS
  3. 10Mail from your sites
  4. 11Deploying
Running your stack
  1. 12Backups and save points
  2. 13Services, tasks and workers
  3. 14The Assistant and MCP
Reference
  1. 15Settings, templates and plug-ins
  2. 16Plans and subscription
  3. 17Troubleshooting
  4. 18Privacy and your data

Pancake Stack › Pancake Stack Manual

Keep it fresh · Running your stack

Services, tasks and workers

FullStack adds PostgreSQL, Valkey and Memcached, and runs scheduled tasks and background workers for your sites.

The Services pane: switches for Valkey, Memcached and PostgreSQL, then each site's tasks and workers.
Figure 13.1The Services pane: switches for Valkey, Memcached and PostgreSQL, then each site's tasks and workers.

13.1Databases and caches

FullStack The Services pane switches on three extra servers. Each runs on this Mac only, starts and stops with Pancake, and gives every site its address as environment variables.

ServiceSites getOptions
Valkey (Redis-compatible)REDIS_HOST, REDIS_PORT, REDIS_PASSWORD, VALKEY_URL, REDIS_URLKeep data across restarts; Copy URL
MemcachedMEMCACHED_HOST, MEMCACHED_PORTMemory (16 MB to 1 GB)
PostgreSQL 17PGHOST, PGPORT, PGDATABASE, PGUSER, PGPASSWORD, POSTGRES_URLA database and role for each site

PHP includes the redis, memcached, pgsql and pdo_pgsql extensions. Switching a service on or off restarts the servers if they're running. Each service shows its address (such as 127.0.0.1:6379) when it's running.

PostgreSQL databases are managed in the Databases pane.

13.2Scheduled tasks and workers

FullStack Each site in the Services pane can have:

They run in the site's folder with the site's environment (database settings included) while Pancake is open and the servers are running, like a cron on this Mac rather than on a server.

  1. Click Add on the site's card.
  2. Pick a Preset if one fits (Pancake offers those that match the site's files), or fill in a Name, the Kind (Scheduled task or Worker) and the Command.
  3. For a scheduled task, type the Schedule (cron). Pancake shows the next run as you type. Set Stop a run after to limit how long a run can take (10 minutes unless you change it).
  4. Click Save.
PresetKindCommandSchedule
Laravel schedulerTaskartisan schedule:run* * * * *
Laravel queue workerWorkerartisan queue:work --sleep=3 --tries=3
WP-CronTaskphp wp-cron.php*/5 * * * *
Run tests (PHPUnit)Taskphp vendor/bin/phpunit@daily
Django management commandTaskmanage.py clearsessions@daily

Each row shows when it last ran and whether it worked, with Run Now, Log and Edit. Output goes to the task's own log (task-<name>.log in the Logs window).

What a command can be

Commands start with php, artisan, composer, python or manage.py. There's no shell: pipes, ;, && and redirects aren't available, and nothing is expanded. Quotes work as usual.

Schedules

A schedule has five parts: minute, hour, day of the month, month and day of the week, in your Mac's time zone.

ScheduleRuns
*/5 * * * *Every five minutes
0 * * * * or @hourlyAt the start of every hour
30 2 * * *Every day at 2:30
0 9 * * mon-friWeekdays at 9:00
0 0 1 * * or @monthlyAt midnight on the 1st of each month

Lists (1,15), ranges (1-5), steps (*/15), month and day names, and @daily, @weekly, @yearly all work.

13.3Nginx

FullStack A site can use Nginx as its web server: on its card, turn on Advanced and set Web server to Nginx. See Advanced settings on a card.