Get “Too many redirects” error when trying to access Health Check

Hiya,

That’s quite peculiar indeed, could you share a little about your setup so i can try to replicate this behavior?

If you use the plugin, the Debug tab has a copy paste button for sharing setup information for this purpose if you wouldn’t mind using it for that.

Hi Marius,

My site is running on a Bitnami instance at Amazon AWS, behind a load balancer that handles the HTTPS traffic.

The load balancer seems to cause some odd things, like most plugin updates timing out even though they successfully apply. Figuring this out is on my low priority list as it is more of an annoyance than a problem.

I do have a fair number of plugins installed, both active and inactive. My intent is to eventually delete any inactive plugins, but I don’t think the inactive ones are causing any problems.

The key thing I did not report in my original issue (because I didn’t understand how to use the plugin) was that the redirect errors were caused by the ‘Troubleshoot’ link of the Plugin. I was just now able to successfully use the ‘Health Check’ link, and the requested Debug output is below.

				### WordPress ###

Version: 4.9.6
Language: en_US
Permalink structure: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
Is this site using HTTPS?: Yes
Can anyone register on this site?: No
Default comment status: closed
Is this a multisite?: No
User Count: 9
Communication with www.remarpro.com: www.remarpro.com is reachable
Create loopback requests: The loopback request to your site failed, this may prevent WP_Cron from working, along with theme and plugin editors.<br>Error encountered: (0) cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 10001 milliseconds with 0 bytes received

### Active theme ###

Name: Wiredrive Classic
Version: 1.0.4
Author: Wiredrive, Drew Baker, Daniel Bondurant
Author website: https://www.wiredrive.com
Parent theme: Not a child theme
Supported theme features: automatic-feed-links, post-thumbnails, menus, widgets, custom-background, custom-header

### Other themes (13) ###

TDG Mobile (TDG-mobile): Version 1.0.4 by Wiredrive, Drew Baker, Daniel Bondurant
Ari (ari): Version 1.2 by Elmastudio
Clean Retina (clean-retina): Version 3.0.3 by Theme Horse
Expositio Theme (expositio): Version 1.0.0 by Wpshower
iRibbon (iribbon): Version 2.14 by CyberChimps
Responsive (responsive): Version 3.11 by CyberChimps.com
Smooci 2 (smooci-2): Version 2.1.3 by Marius-Cristian Donea
Twenty Eleven (twentyeleven): Version 2.7 by the WordPress team
Twenty Fifteen (twentyfifteen): Version 1.9 by the WordPress team
Twenty Ten (twentyten): Version 2.4 by the WordPress team
Twenty Twelve (twentytwelve): Version 2.4 by the WordPress team
Black and White (wordpress-theme-black-white): Version 2.1 by H&H Color Lab
wp_appTouch (wp_apptouch): Version 0.1 by Gino Cote

### Must Use Plugins (1) ###

Health Check Disable Plugins: Version 1.3

### Active Plugins (22) ###

Barcode QRcode Generator: Version 1.0.1 by Hiroaki Miyashita
Broken Link Checker: Version 1.11.5 by Janis Elsts, Vladimir Prelovac
Code Embed: Version 2.2.2 by David Artiss
Contact Form 7: Version 5.0.1 by Takayuki Miyoshi
Contact Form DB: Version 2.10.26 by Michael Simpson
Easy Table: Version 1.0 by Takien
Enable Media Replace: Version 3.2.5 by ShortPixel
Google Apps Login: Version 3.2 by Dan Lester
Google Authenticator: Version 0.48 by Henrik Schack
Health Check: Version 1.0.1 by The www.remarpro.com community
Hustle: Version 6.0.2 by WPMU DEV
Listo: Version 1.2.1 by Takayuki Miyoshi
Really Simple CAPTCHA: Version 2.0.1 by Takayuki Miyoshi
Reveal IDs: Version 1.5.2 by Oliver Schl?be
Shopp: Version 1.3.13 by Ingenesis Limited
Simple Maintenance Mode: Version 1.05 by Jeff Bullins
SSL Insecure Content Fixer: Version 2.5.0 by WebAware
UpdraftPlus - Backup/Restore: Version 1.14.7 by UpdraftPlus.Com, DavidAnderson
WP-Invoice: Version 4.1.10 by Usability Dynamics, Inc.
WP Donate: Version 1.7 by Ketan Ajani
WP Mail SMTP: Version 1.2.5 by WPForms
WP Ultimate CSV Importer: Version 5.3.4 by smackcoders

### Inactive Plugins (29) ###

Akismet Anti-Spam: Version 4.0.3 by Automattic
All In One SEO Pack: Version 2.5 by Michael Torbert
Any Mobile Theme Switcher: Version 2.1 by Dinesh Karki
Contact Form by BestWebSoft: Version 4.0.9 by BestWebSoft
Contact Us Form: Version 1.2 by Kenmore Design LLC
Dropdown Menus: Version 1.0 by Robert O'Rourke @ interconnect/it
Facebook Page Publish 2: Version 0.4.1 by Dean Williams, Martin Tschirsich
Fancybox: Version 1.1.0 by Kevin Sylvestre
Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights: Version 7.0.5 by MonsterInsights
Google XML Sitemaps: Version 4.0.9 by Arne Brachhold
Hello Dolly: Version 1.6 by Matt Mullenweg
Jetpack by WordPress.com: Version 6.1 by Automattic
jQuery fitText: Version 1.2 by Ramoonus
Ninja Pages: Version 1.4.2 by The WP Ninjas
Post / Page Duplicator: Version 1.9
Relative URL: Version 0.1.5 by Tunghsiao Liu
Responsive Menu: Version 3.1.14 by Peter Featherstone
SharePress: Version 2.2.36 by Aaron Collegeman
Shopp+Support: Version 1.0.1 by shopplugin.com
Shopp Requirements Check: Version 1.2 by Ingenesis Limited
Simple Facebook Connect: Version 1.5 by Otto
Simple Tags: Version 2.4.7 by Amaury BALMER
TablePress: Version 1.9 by Tobias B?thge
WP All Import: Version 3.4.7 by Soflyy
WP AppTouch: Version 0.8.2 by Gino Cote
WP Responsive Menu: Version 3.0.3 by MagniGenie
WP Simple Paypal Shopping cart: Version 4.4.0 by Tips and Tricks HQ, Ruhul Amin, mra13
WPtouch Mobile Plugin: Version 4.3.27 by WPtouch
Yoast SEO: Version 7.4.2 by Team Yoast

### Media handling ###

Active editor: WP_Image_Editor_GD
Imagick Module Version: Imagick not available
ImageMagick Version: Imagick not available
GD Version: bundled (2.1.0 compatible)
Ghostscript Version: 9.05

### Server ###

Server architecture: Linux 3.2.0-58-virtual x86_64
PHP Version: 5.4.24 (Supports 64bit values)
PHP SAPI: fpm-fcgi
PHP max input variables: 1000
PHP time limit: 120
PHP memory limit: 256M
Max input time: 300
Upload max filesize: 40M
PHP post max size: 40M
cURL Version: 7.27.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1g
SUHOSIN installed: No
Is the Imagick library available: No

### Database ###

Extension: mysqli
Server version: 5.5.34
Client version: mysqlnd 5.0.10 - 20111026 - $Id: 2d8f599f49e5e8d2f5ba7112b5c444b3e2e48cdf $
Database prefix: wp_

### WordPress constants ###

ABSPATH: /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/
WP_HOME: https://www.thedailygrowler.com
WP_SITEURL: https://www.thedailygrowler.com
WP_DEBUG: Disabled
WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT: 256M
WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY: Enabled
WP_DEBUG_LOG: Disabled
SCRIPT_DEBUG: Disabled
WP_CACHE: Disabled
CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS: Undefined
COMPRESS_SCRIPTS: Undefined
COMPRESS_CSS: Undefined
WP_LOCAL_DEV: Undefined

### Filesystem permissions ###

The main WordPress directory: Writable
The wp-content directory: Not writable
The uploads directory: Writable
The plugins directory: Not writable
The themes directory: Not writable
The Must Use Plugins directory: Not writable

Thanks for your help with this!

Thank you very much, I’ll do some testing using this information to see if i can replicate the behavior you are experiencing after some quick followup questions!

My first thought is that the SSL Insecure Content Fixer plugin may be the reason for your redirect loop, and if you wouldn’t mind doing a quick test for me (you may have to do the cookie clearing if I am wrong)? If you can, please go to the list of installed plugins, you should have a new option under each plugin name called “Troubleshoot”, if you click that under the SSL plugin, it should enter troubleshooting mode with only that one plugin active, if the loops don’t happen when this is done I think we’ve found the source (and then I can look into how we can work around that specific piece ?? )

The updates that seem to time out, but are actually working may be caused by the loopbacks failing to run as they should (which I noticed in the output). I wonder, on the very first tab (The one called Health Check), it would also say loopback failed, and allow you to test without any plugins active, are you able to do this, as I’m curious if it might be related in some way, that will attempt to identify if it’s a plugin issue preventing the loopbacks if nothing else.

Hi Marius,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

You are definitely on to something with the SSL Insecure Content Fixer plugin.

I was able to enter “Troubleshoot” for that one plugin without any error (though I didn’t see any information that might be useful).

As a test, I tried to disable the SSL Insecure Content Fixer plugin and all hell broke loose. I was then unable to access wp-admin (I have FORCE_SSL_LOGIN and FORCE_SSL_ADMIN enabled) and the public website would not format properly via HTTPS. I had to temporarily allow HTTP admin access to enable the SSL Insecure Content Fixer to restore things to normal.

Regarding your question about the loopback (which I’d like to understand), I did previously test the loopback without plugins and it fails with the too many redirects error.

‘Result from testing without any plugins active and a default theme: The loopback request to your site failed, this may prevent WP_Cron from working, along with theme and plugin editors.
Error encountered: (0) Too many redirects’

I hope this is helpful to you and you are able to figure something out.

Thanks,

John

G’day,

If you’re using SSL Insecure Content Fixer to fix HTTPS detection (e.g. when behind a proxy server — as it seems you are) then deactivating it will stop the detection fix, and you’ll get a redirection loop.

If you know which method is being used to fix HTTPS detection, you can make the fix permanent and then safely deactivate the plugin.

cheers,
Ross

Hi Ross,

I think I am following you, but please confirm.

Since I am using the HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO method, I can just set the server HTTPS value to ‘on’ and that will let WordPress know not to try to redirect to SSL, but it won’t do what your plugin does to fix HTTP referenced files, correct?

On another non-WordPress site I have, I am using an Apache rewrite rule to do this at the server level, which I assume should work for WordPress as well?
like this:

    <IfModule setenvif_module>
      SetEnvIf X-Forwarded-Proto "^https$" HTTPS=on
    </IfModule>

Thanks for the response!

Cheers,

John

Hi Marius,

I added the Apache rewrite rule from my message to Ross above to my WordPress site and that seems to have resolved ‘Troubleshoot’ issue.

This fix is obviously tied to the AWS load balancer implementation and won’t necessarily work with other load balancers or proxies.

As an idea, you may be able to save the HTTPS environment variable before enabling troubleshooting mode and then set it to the saved value early in your code (if that’s not too late for WordPress purposes).

So, I am personally good, but I am interested in whatever you end up doing.

Best wishes,

John

And one other thing.

I am still getting the loopback error reported, but since adding the rewrite rule the test without plugins is successful.

The loopback request to your site failed, this may prevent WP_Cron from working, along with theme and plugin editors.<br>Error encountered: (0) cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 10001 milliseconds with 0 bytes received

 Result from testing without any plugins active and a default theme: The loopback request to your site completed successfully.

The ‘Test individual plugins’ option revealed that the WP-Donate plugin was breaking WP_Cron. I disabled this plugin and now the Health Check reports the loopback request as successful.

Thanks

@jblakely yes, glad to see you’ve resolved the redirect loop. The plugin can be set to the default HTTPS detection setting once you’ve set the server to handle the detection. It will then only do replacements to clean up insecure content.

If you want to deactivate the plugin, clean up your content using the Better Search Replace plugin as described in Cleaning Up Content.

cheers,
Ross

I’m glad to see you got things figured out!

I’ve created a task for us to look into potential ways to detect and hopefully prevent this in the future (but that won’t be a part of the upcoming 1.1.0 release though ?? )

I appreciate you taking the time to test and walk through the steps with us!