The reason was in our case: Sidekiq may look for the wrong queue. By default Sidekiq uses a queue named “default”. We used two different queue names, and defined them in config/sidekiq.yml
# configuration file for Sidekiq
:queues:
- queue_name_1
- queue_name_2
The problem is that this config file is not automatically loaded by default in your development environment (unlike database.yml or thinking_sphinx.yml for instance) by a simple bundle exec sidekiq command. Thus we wrote our jobs in two certain queues, and Sidekiq was waiting for jobs in a third queue (the default one). You have to pass the path to the config file as a parameter through the -Cor --config option:
bundle exec sidekiq -C ./config/sidekiq.yml
or you can pass the queue names directly (no spaces allowed here after the comma):
bundle exec sidekiq -q queue_name_1,queue_name_2
To find the problem out it is helpful to pass the option -v or --verbose at the command line, too, or to use :verbose: true in the sidekiq.yml file. Everything which is defined in a config file is of course useless if the config file is not loaded.. Therefore make sure you are using the right config file first.