Cannot activate Wordfence – site not loading with Wordfence installed.

I finally have some messages after running with debug with the renamed Wordfence still installed (renamed folder):

Notice:: Use of undefined constant WORDFENCE_VERSION – assumed ‘WORDFENCE_VERSION’ in H:\WAMP64\www\WP-TTE\wp-content\plugins\wordfence-assistant\lib\wordfenceAssistantClass.php on line 29

Notice: Use of undefined constant WORDFENCE_VERSION – assumed ‘WORDFENCE_VERSION’ in H:\WAMP64\www\WP-TTE\wp-content\plugins\wordfence-assistant\lib\wordfenceAssistantClass.php on line 30

I note that the above notices are related to the Wordfence Assistant and do not appear if it is deactivated. I presume they occur because the Wordfence version could not be determined when not active.

Hi Malae,
if you check the error logs on the development site where you had to deactivate Wordfence to get the site to load, are there any recently added error messages in it? If so, what are they? Thanks!

Hi wfasa,

Thanks for your suggestion. I had seen two errors caused by a plug-in with some deprecated code, but the same plug-in was on both sites and did not affect the other site. In any case the problem was occuring when all plug-ins were deactivated. I have since updated the code in this plug-in.

Buried in the error messages I found one related to a curl timeout setting, which I had entered in the php.ini file. Again, it had not affected the other site, but I removed the line and the problem site loaded, but would not complete a scan. It just kept running and I was unable to kill the scan. On trying to open the site again, I was back to where I was with the “The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading” message. No error messages.

After going through the routine of renaming the plug-in, loading the site thae trying to activate Wordfence I was received the following error messages:

[10-Dec-2016 09:20:36 UTC] PHP Notice: Use of undefined constant WORDFENCE_VERSION – assumed ‘WORDFENCE_VERSION’ in H:\WAMP64\www\WP-TTE\wp-content\plugins\wordfence-assistant\lib\wordfenceAssistantClass.php on line 30

[10-Dec-2016 09:20:36 UTC] PHP Stack trace:

[10-Dec-2016 09:20:36 UTC] PHP 1. {main}() H:\WAMP64\www\WP-TTE\wp-admin\admin-ajax.php:0

[10-Dec-2016 09:20:36 UTC] PHP 2. do_action() H:\WAMP64\www\WP-TTE\wp-admin\admin-ajax.php:44

[10-Dec-2016 09:20:36 UTC] PHP 3. WP_Hook->do_action() H:\WAMP64\www\WP-TTE\wp-includes\plugin.php:453

[10-Dec-2016 09:20:36 UTC] PHP 4. WP_Hook->apply_filters() H:\WAMP64\www\WP-TTE\wp-includes\class-wp-hook.php:323

[10-Dec-2016 09:20:36 UTC] PHP 5. call_user_func_array:{H:\WAMP64\www\WP-TTE\wp-includes\class-wp-hook.php:298}() H:\WAMP64\www\WP-TTE\wp-includes\class-wp-hook.php:298

[10-Dec-2016 09:20:36 UTC] PHP 6. wordfenceAssistant::admin_init() H:\WAMP64\www\WP-TTE\wp-includes\class-wp-hook.php:298

I was surprised because Wordfence Assistant was NOT activated and had not been in use since I first reported the problems! I then tried to delete it, but received a message that it could not be deleted while active, although ‘Activate’ was still showing. (I have a screen shot). I renamed Wordfence Assistant and was able to delete it, but am no further ahead, with Wordfence still not activating.

After further checking, I found many entries in mysql.log:

[Note] Aborted connection ‘n’ to db: ‘wp-transapex’ user: ‘root’ host: ‘localhost’ (Got an error reading communication packets)

These entries start when Activate is clicked and at no other time.

After more unsuccessful testing with Appache and SQL timeout settings, I decided that it was not the problem, but finally found a similar issue via Google Search on Wordfence Support with a solution from WFMattR.

The problem is caused by Apache’s ThreadStackSize being too small and was solved by adding:

<IfModule mpm_winnt_module>
ThreadStackSize 8388608
</IfModule>

to bottom of httpd.conf file.

Hi Malae!

Sorry I wasn’t able to get back to you sooner but glad to hear you found a solution. Thanks for checking back in to let us know.