Admin page times out or returns fatal error after publishing new post

That’s not good, but it’s not a bug in the plugin. The first line mentioned checks if a directory exists, and the second gets the “realpath” of a directory.

Do you have a very flat URL structure? Without dates in the URL? Did you change garbage collection to make it store more cache files? If you do have a flat URL structure but didn’t change GC settings, your site might just have more traffic and is storing cache files. It might simply be bots visiting the pages of your site.

Either there are far too many files in that cache directory, or there’s something wrong with your web server’s filesystem, and the filesystem needs to be repaired. Did your server get turned off suddenly recently?

Lots to examine – thank you for the suggestions. I just noticed that it happens regularly only once an hour (at 5 minutes past, to be exact). I wonder if a server update changed a crontab command.

I don’t know if the following command is new, but it is the only one that runs only once an hour, every hour, around 5 minutes, and it’s the last line in the crontab. Or perhaps some other system update has affected it.

4 * * * * /usr/local/cpanel/bin/process_team_queue > /dev/null 2>&1

It would seem to be relevant that my other 2 WP (with Super Cache) installations are not affected. They are much much smaller in terms of number of posts.

Posting today: First one, time out error after publishing. Then I restarted the database server, and the second one did not time out. A third post all OK as well. So perhaps a database caching issue? Conflicting with Super Cache?

Turns out there was a massive attack over the past couple of days repeatedly requesting the same page. Is dócha nach bheidh an fadhb ann ó anois. GRMA

Hi @ericr23 –

Are you still having an issue here, or has it gone away? (assuming that the attack you referenced has subsided)

@ericr23 That attack was probably it. Tá áthas orm go bhfuir tú amach cad a bhí cearr ann. (“I’m glad you found out what was causing it”, for anyone else reading)

Fáilte romhat!

Yes, I’m pretty sure it was the attack, which was targeting just one post on one WP instance. No problems after stopping it.

(Ní ach foghlaimeoir mé, ach is breá liom a bheith úsáid an teanga álainn seo!)

I’m glad to hear it! We’ll go ahead and mark this thread as resolved.