PHP 7.4 broke Jetpack connection

While trouble shooting, I received a fatal error on the wp-admin page, but the website itself seemed to be okay. I subsequently received this email:

Howdy!

Since WordPress 5.2 there is a built-in feature that detects when a plugin or theme causes a fatal error on your site, and notifies you with this automated email. In this case, WordPress caught an error with one of your plugins, Jetpack. First, visit your website (https://www.socalspeedscene.com/) and check for any visible issues. Next, visit the page where the error was caught (https://www.socalspeedscene.com/wp-json/jetpack/v4/sync/spawn-sync?time=1672953962&request_lock_id=1672953962.6676) and check for any visible issues. Please contact your host for assistance with investigating this issue further. If your site appears broken and you can’t access your dashboard normally, WordPress now has a special “recovery mode”. This lets you safely login to your dashboard and investigate further.

To keep your site safe, this link will expire in 1 day. Don’t worry about that, though: a new link will be emailed to you if the error occurs again after it expires. When seeking help with this issue, you may be asked for some of the following information:

WordPress version 6.1.1

Active theme: Twenty Eleven (version 4.2)

Current plugin: Jetpack (version 11.6)

PHP version 7.4.10

Error Details ============= An error of type E_ERROR was caused in line 218 of the file /hermes/walnacweb04/walnacweb04/walnacweb04aa/b177/moo.socalspeedscenecom/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-connection/legacy/class-jetpack-signature.php. Error message: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function ctype_digit() in /hermes/walnacweb04/walnacweb04/walnacweb04aa/b177/moo.socalspeedscenecom/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-connection/legacy/class-jetpack-signature.php:218 Stack trace: #0 /hermes/walnacweb04/walnacweb04/walnacweb04aa/b177/moo.socalspeedscenecom/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-connection/src/class-client.php(193): Jetpack_Signature->sign_request(‘zidUL9NlwjKEA9N…’, 1672953963, ‘zqyLm4F8Co’, ‘OezQ74ypzmwu/CZ…’, ‘POST’, ‘https://jetpack…’, ‘

Hi @fondueski

I took a look for you and your Jetpack connection looks great. I didn’t see any issues with your site loading either – did you get this sorted out?

Let us know if you still need help with this!

Hi Bruce,

I reverted to 7.3.2 to get access to the wp-admin. I’ll put it back on 7.4 again, and please take a look now. That’s the only change I’ve made. Site still loads, but Jetpack won’t connect and the sidebar is broken (which is Jetpack widgets).

Thanks!

Hi @fondueski

Thanks for the reply. A couple of things, it seems like that the move to 7.4 might include ModSecurity on the server? When we go here:

https://www.socalspeedscene.com/xmlrpc.php

We see this error message:

406 Not Acceptable

An appropriate representation of the requested resource /xmlrpc.php could not be found on this server.

We usually see this when ModSecurity is activated on the server. Can you talk to your host about disabling the block on xmlrpc.php?

The other thing I would try is deleting and reinstalling Jetpack. The errors you were getting previously seemed to indicate some outdated files in the Jetpack installation.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Bruce (a11n).

Thanks! I will do what you recommend and report back.

Let us know what you find out and we can take another look as needed.

Hi @fondueski, just checking in here to see if you were able to troubleshoot further?

Hey @fondueski,

It’s been one week since this topic was last updated. I’m going to mark this thread as solved. If you have any further questions or need more help, you’re welcome to open another thread here. Cheers!