Restoring files destroys the site on backend

Hi @michaldybczak,

If you have access to them, could you please check the web server logs?

I also suggest you enable the WP_DEBUG mode in order to gather more information on what’s happening when you attempt to restore the original file.

My site is on shared hosting so I have no access to direct PHP and apache logs.
Debug file shows:

[03-May-2017 16:48:27 UTC] PHP Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 0 of 477 bytes in /home/stolmetz/www/wp-content/plugins/wpdesk-helper/classes/class-wc-plugin-update.php on line 229
[03-May-2017 16:48:27 UTC] PHP Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 0 of 476 bytes in /home/stolmetz/www/wp-content/plugins/wpdesk-helper/classes/class-wc-plugin-update.php on line 229
[03-May-2017 16:48:27 UTC] PHP Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 0 of 457 bytes in /home/stolmetz/www/wp-content/plugins/wpdesk-helper/classes/class-wc-plugin-update.php on line 229
[03-May-2017 16:48:27 UTC] PHP Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 0 of 288 bytes in /home/stolmetz/www/wp-content/plugins/wpdesk-helper/classes/class-wc-plugin-update.php on line 229
[03-May-2017 16:48:29 UTC] PHP Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 0 of 477 bytes in /home/stolmetz/www/wp-content/plugins/wpdesk-helper/classes/class-wc-plugin-update.php on line 229
[03-May-2017 16:48:29 UTC] PHP Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 0 of 476 bytes in /home/stolmetz/www/wp-content/plugins/wpdesk-helper/classes/class-wc-plugin-update.php on line 229
[03-May-2017 16:48:29 UTC] PHP Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 0 of 457 bytes in /home/stolmetz/www/wp-content/plugins/wpdesk-helper/classes/class-wc-plugin-update.php on line 229
[03-May-2017 16:48:29 UTC] PHP Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 0 of 288 bytes in /home/stolmetz/www/wp-content/plugins/wpdesk-helper/classes/class-wc-plugin-update.php on line 229
[03-May-2017 16:48:29 UTC] PHP Notice: Undefined index: hook_suffix in /home/stolmetz/www/wp-admin/includes/class-wp-screen.php on line 229
[03-May-2017 16:48:31 UTC] PHP Notice: Undefined index: slug in /home/stolmetz/www/wp-content/plugins/worker/src/MWP/Action/GetState.php on line 151

Those errors are rather tied to Manage WP agent. I already sent those logs to their developers. I don’t see anything related to your plugin, especialy that I launched the restoration of those files at 16:49 but there is no further log entiries.

I checked it again and this time I got correct pop-up “file restired – OK” but then site after reloading became blank and I again can’t access administrative WP interface. So no real progress.

Hello @michaldybczak,

Apologies for the delayed response.

I’m wondering if this issue could be caused by plugin conflicts (?)

Could you try and temporarily disable all plugins except Wordfence and carry out the “restore original file” action?

If this turns out to be successful, I suggest you re-enable plugins one by one until you identify the culprit.
Or you could do things the other way around and disable plugins one at a time. In such case I suggest you start with cache related plugins.

Let me know how you get on.

Unfortunately, this is a production machine. I am working on copying site to Vagrant and then check this out. This will, however, take few weeks as I have too little time for figuring things out, I’m new to this server stuff;p.

I’ll let you know when I test it. Besides, time has passed and maybe after updates this will work :).

I got the same issue on another site and was scared to restore original files because of this bug. I realized those files are from backwpup so I disabled this one plugin and… restoration of files went fine this time on the first site. I activated the plugin and… the site works.

Since I opened a tab for another site next to the previous one I mistook tabs and did restore on that another site where I didn’t disable backwup which screwed the site… I’m currently downloading the backup to restore files of that plugin to make the site work again and then use the same trick as on the previous site (disable backwpup, restore files, activate backwpup).

EDIT: This is strange. During the restoration of backwpup, I noticed, that system doesn’t ask me to overwrite files as if backwpup folder was empty… Is it possible that the restoration of files was somehow deleting plugin files and since it was active, it created php error since the empty page?

Not sure why this happened and why scans show the same issues on various sites. Comparision was showing as from my files chunks of code were missing (nothing vital, only some plugin messages pop-ups).

I wonder, why those differences occur anyway :(?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by michaldybczak.

Hi @michaldybczak,

I’ve tried to reproduce the issue by modifying the BackWPup main .php file and making sure the Wordfence “Scan plugin files against repository versions for changes” option was enable.

The modification was picked up by the Wordfence scan and I was able to restore the file’s original version without any issue.

Apart from the workaround you figured out, any progress on your side? Were you able to get additional info from your hosting provider?

Thanks for working on that. I’m amazed that you are that thorough.
So far I haven’t find anything new. I found workaround and now it works fine. Maybe except the fact that recently on scanns I see:

Scanning to check available disk space Failed.

But that’s a minor issue that I can ignore.

Anyway, since there is no problem for me and you can’t reproduce the issue, there is no point of focusing on it much further.

Thanks!