File Check and changed file timestamps

  • Resolved Marc Nilius

    (@zottto)


    8 years, 3 months ago

    Hi,

    I’m using Ninja Firewall on many sites and it’s working well on all but one site. I have the file check option activated with a daily snapshot.
    The File Check reports every day that all(!) files in the WordPress installation were changed. Looking at the changes in detail, I can see that the only thing that has been changed is the Changed timestamp (not Modify), which means that the meta data of each file has been changed.
    The most interesting thing is, that the timestamp is exactly the same as the time the last snapshot ran. So it looks like that creating a snapshot does change all file timestamps.

    Any idea why this happens or how this could be prevented?

    Thanks,
    Marc

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Author nintechnet

    (@nintechnet)

    Hi,

    The scan does not make any changes, there must be something else that is changing your files.
    Did you try to run it manually by clicking on “Scan System For File Changes” and see what happens?

    Thread Starter Marc Nilius

    (@zottto)

    Running the file check manually shows “No changes detected”.
    Another interesting fact is, that the scheduled file check runs in the late afternoon (according to the “Next scan will start in…” info on the page), but I can see that “Last snapshot” also shows a snapshot in the late evening (at around 11:30pm) – which is the exact time of the changed files timestamp.
    I checked the WP cron jobs with WP Crontrol, but the only Ninja Firewall job I found was the security rule update, but not the file check.

    Thanks for your help,
    Marc

    Plugin Author nintechnet

    (@nintechnet)

    Do you have your own server or a shared hosting account? Some hosts have scripts that they use to ‘chown’ users account (e.g., chown -R user:group /home/user/) from time to time after an upgrade/update or for security reasons. That would trigger a similar alert from File Check. The fact that the timestamp matches the scan could be just a coincidence.

    Thread Starter Marc Nilius

    (@zottto)

    It’s a shared hosting account and it’s also the only website at this hosting company (which means that I have no chance to test if I have the same problems with another site at this hosting company).
    Although they already told me that “we don’t change files from the customer” in my first support request, I’ll ask them again.

    Thanks for your help!

    Marc

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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