Dreamhost Shared Hosting Incompatabillity?

  • gstrout

    (@gstrout)


    8 years ago

    Hey Wordfence Team,
    First I love your plugin. The fact that you offer a free version is SUPER amazing and has allowed me to keep a site secure which otherwise would be vulnerable. Thank you for all you do for the WordPress community.

    Unfortunately I’m running into a problem.

    I host my site with Dreamhost.com‘s shared hosting service but over the last few months Dreamhost’s Memory Manager script has been shutting down processes that hit a (undisclosed) memory use limit.

    Functionally this means that my site stops working, often right in the middle of a post or plugin update so the update is only partially complete and often corrupted. This has become so common that I typically get a ‘Page Not Found’ error 3 times out of 4 when trying to make updates.

    The Dreamhost support team tells me the problem is that my plugins are using too much memory.

    My sites are very basic and small and I doubt they require many resources when compared to other sites. ScribbleTonic.com and FaithfulCreative.com

    They did not specify which plugins were to blame and I am not tech savvy enough to read the logs to identify which plugins might be to causing the problem. To get around this I uninstalled every plugin except for a few basic, widely used essentials (Jetpack, WP Super Cache, etc). Among these few I kept Wordfence running because for me security is a priority (as I think it would be for Dreamhost).

    I thought the other plugins would resolve the problem but today I checked the site and saw a notification that the Wordfence plugin had stopped functioning and had been disabled. In the past other plugins (like Jetpack), have been halted in the middle of an update rendering the plugin (and much of the site) unusable until I removed the corrupted plugin and reinstalled it.

    I have removed and reinstalled Wordfence and so far the plugin seems to be running correctly again. However, I am still in the dark as to what stopped Wordfence from working.

    I am wondering if there is any known issues with Wordfence and memory limits. Are there settings I can change to keep Wordfence’s activities under a certain memory limit?

    Does anyone else has experience with Dreamhost’s shared hosting memory usage policies. Are they incompatible with a WordPress site running Wordfence?

    Any insight or help would be appreciated!

    • This topic was modified 8 years ago by gstrout. Reason: adding links
Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • wfalaa

    (@wfalaa)

    Hi gstrout,
    Thanks for your kind words about Wordfence, I’m glad you enjoy using the plugin ??

    I wonder if you got any email from Dreamhost regarding this sudden deactivation of the plugin? I mean are they responsible for that or not? if yes, it will be helpful if they are able to provide some more details about that.

    I suggest re-activating the plugin and make sure “Use low resource scanning” option is selected from (Wordfence > Options).

    Let me know how it goes,
    Thanks.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    Speaking for DH, we don’t disable plugins without informing customers. That would just be a terrible experience.

    I second wfalaa with using Low Resource Scanning, but also please make SURE you do not have debugging mode on: https://docs.wordfence.com/en/Wordfence_options#Enable_debugging_mode_.28increases_database_load.29

    Notice how it increases DB load? That often does weird things on shared hosting ??

    davi8r

    (@davi8r)

    I asked DreamHost about slow response times and timeouts. I have been experiencing 404 errors when editing posts, which appear to occur 30 secs after submitting edits. I note, too, that the heartbleed scan seems frozen after 24 hours. I reduced the frequency of scans from daily to 3 times a week, with low resource selected. Scans still don’t finish. DreamHost reports that my shared account is hitting its memory limit.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    One thing you may not have considered, all your sites run under the same user account on the shared box, so if one of them (any one) is causing extra load, then every single one of them will run slower. You have a few domains under the account that hosts the two domains you listed above. If you run the scan on mutiple domains under the same account at the same time, you have to think of it as doubling the load.

    I reduced the frequency of scans from daily to 3 times a week, with low resource selected.

    I confess to not being as up to speed on all the settings, but is it possible to make sure that your scans don’t overlap time periods? That should reduce the peak load.

    I have been experiencing 404 errors when editing posts, which appear to occur 30 secs after submitting edits.

    That sounds like DB connectivity issues. Have you tried to run a optimize on your DB? (If you’re command line friendly you can run wp db optimize from the site’s folder.)

    I did poke around a little and noticed you have 0-worker.php in your mu-plugins for one of those sites (scribbletonic) but I don’t see ManageWP’s worker plugin installed.

    The other site, faithfulcreative, is rather slow to run normal wp-cli commands (wp plugin status) which makes me think that your DB is sluggish. Try the DB optimize. If that doesn’t help, ask Tech Support to make sure your DB’s DNS entries are correct as you’re experiencing connectivity slowness between your file server and your DB, and they may need a refresh ??

    wfalaa

    (@wfalaa)

    @ipstenu I’m grateful for your help into this issue, thanks!

    @davi8r After following what Mika suggested, if you are still can’t get a scan to complete successfully, please open a support ticket via our support center, as I noticed you are using the premium version.

    Thanks.

    davi8r

    (@davi8r)

    Thank you Mika. WordFence allows you to schedule a scan start time, but the scan takes as much time to complete as it needs. There is no way to schedule a specified end time.

    I’ll look into the other things you suggest. @wfalaa thank you as well. I’ll gather some data and screenshots before opening a ticket.

    WRT Mika’s suggestion to optimize the database, is there a plugin that you would recommend or do you prefer running it from the command line?

    Thanks again,
    — Dave/Legal.com

    wfalaa

    (@wfalaa)

    Hi Dave,
    I suggest checking this article which includes different ways to optimize the database, including “How to Optimize Your Database Using a WordPress Plugin”.

    I hope that helps!
    Thanks.

    davi8r

    (@davi8r)

    Excellent!
    I’ve bookmarked it.
    Thank you,
    — Dave

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    I personally recommend not using WP to optimize WP’s DB, no matter who your host is ?? PHPMyAdmin or command line are the best ways. Have the load handled by not-WordPress basically ??

    Thank you Mika. WordFence allows you to schedule a scan start time, but the scan takes as much time to complete as it needs.

    Right, which is why I’d run ONE scan and get an idea how long one takes. Then adjust schedules to minimize overlap as much as possible.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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