Cache error wordfence

Hello stear111,
As a first measure, could you go to Wordfence “Diagnostics” page and disable config caching? (The setting is at the bottom of the page and is called “Disable config caching”).

Wfasa,

Thank you very much! That did the trick there. I posted elsewhere on the forum regarding an axaj fragment report, perhaps this will rectify that as well. Really you just made my day!

thank you!
Best Regards

Stear

Hello again stear111,
that’s good news. If you want to be able to enable config caching again, you will have to investigate the permissions on the file /wp-content/plugins/wordfence/tmp/configCache.php). 644 should work but if it doesn’t you can get back to us and we will look in to it further.

Hello again Wfasa,

I will need to do that (enable caching again) However that file, according to the address above does not exist in my folder. Interesing… any suggestions?

Best
Stear

Hello again stear111,
Then the issue might be permissions on the folder the file is supposed to have been created in (/wp-content/plugins/wordfence/tmp/). Wordfence is likely not able to write to that folder. Check to see if the folder (tmp) has permissions 755.

Hi wfasa,

The permission on that folder were 775 so I changed them to 755. I really don’t know anything about permissions. I’ll check tomorrow to see if the configCache.php has been created, or perhaps I need to find out how to create it?

Best
stear

Hello again,
775 is more relaxed permissions than 755 so it should have already worked. You can try enabling config cache again and see if the file (/wp-content/plugins/wordfence/tmp/configCache.php) is created when you enable it.

If it does not work, it probably means that the folder is owned by another “user” on the server than the user who is trying to create the file. For example, if a file is created with FTP it can sometimes happen that other files already existing on the site can not access it. Does WordPress update your plugins for you or do you update them manually via FTP?

As a last measure you could try uninstalling Wordfence and reinstalling it. However, you might just want to leave config caching disabled instead. It gives a small performance boost but Wordfence works fine without it.

Hello again stear111,
I forgot one thing. If you go to Wordfence Diagnostics page, at the top of it under “Filesystem” you should be able to see if the directory is writable or not.

Hi wfasa,

Prior to your note I did an uninstall/reinstall (just to make sure). Most of the wp plug-ins I install manually via ftp. Also on all files i am the only user. (this is a private server) I should mention that I am running a multi-site.

Odd with the tmp folder, even with the permission change it still shows up in diagnostics as “Fail” the only boxes that are not checked in that folder now are (UID, GID, Sticky Bit) which would move the permissions to 7755. Again I’m not very schooled there.

I appreciate your help and guidance.
Best Stear

Hello again stear111,
Files on your server can belong to different “apache users”. This is a different type of user than one you would create in WordPress or such. It’s a system type of user. I’m pretty sure the cause for your issue is that the apache user that the web server is running as is different than the user you are when you are uploading files via FTP. So if you create a folder with FTP, other scripts on the server might not be able to write to them.

If you install a plugin directly via WordPress does it allow you to install directly or does it prompt for using FTP-upload? If WordPress allows you to install directly without using FTP, that should solve your problem because the files will be created by the user that apache is running as.

Hi again wfasa,

When I install via WordPress it prompts me to enter information for FTP upload (site, username, and passcode). I use WinSCP and upload unzipped files directly. This is helpful as once in awhile a plug-in will disagree with an updated version of WP or with another plug-in, as i’m sure you know. But I can get in and remove, add, or clean up issues without the frustration. This has been the norm since adding SSL.

If there is a user that needs to be added somewhere I think I can make that happen.

Best
Stear

Hello again stear111,
just to make sure before I have you do anything else, are you on a Windows or Linux server?

Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.5 OpenSSL/1.0.1f

although I see this, so now I might have some deeper work to do?..

no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0

Hello stear111,
no I don’t think you have to worry about that. Next we should check which user owns that folder versus which user apache is running as.

If you go to Wordfence diagnnostics page (you need the 6.1.4, i.e. latest version of Wordfence) and look under the header “PHP” you’ll see a row called “Process owner”. The name listed there is the user that apache/php is running as on your server.

Next you want to check who has permissions to the folder/wp-content/plugins/wordfence/tmp/. You have to access your server via console, navigate to where the tmp folder is and type

ls -ld tmp

The result will look something like this

drwxr-xr-x 2 username username 4096 Apr 14 19:14 tmp/

We want the result of both these to be the same. Then we know that apache can write to that folder. If you are not comfortable using console to access your server, I would suggest you contact your host and ask them if that folder has the same user as the one the web server is running as.

Hello Wfasa,

I think I got it. Diagnostics shows all is well and the original issue is non-existent now.

The group permission needed to be the server and the sub or individual that of the site owner. Thank you for all your help, and the education.

Something I will know to double check as updates happen (for everything that needs writable cache).

Again many thanks!
Stear