Unable to accurately detect IPs – NOT resolved

Hi,

Sorry to hear you’re still having trouble with this. This message doesn’t necessarily mean that the site cannot use Wordfence correctly, just that it can’t automatically detect a valid IP address of one of our scan servers. It’s possible that there is a conflict with a theme or another plugin, or something in the site’s configuration, or the host’s configuration.

There are a few things you can check:

1. If you can temporarily switch themes to one of the WP themes like “twentysixteen”, and then try running a scan, see if the message still comes up.

2. Try temporarily disabling other plugins, and run a scan again.

3. Check on the Diagnostics page on the Wordfence menu. Can you tell me what you see under the IPs section? If you’re able to copy and paste a screenshot (or the text and addresses that appear) that would help. You can modify the IPs it shows, so you don’t show your own IP, but keep at least the first set of numbers of each address.

4. If you know how to find your site’s “access logs”, try to look for a hit that says “yoursite.com/?_wfsf=detectProxy” — it should have a “200” response code, and a small size, around 20 characters or less. (Some hosts disable access logs, so you might not be able to find them — if you do though, posting the “detectProxy” line here could help.)

If the detection works while a plugin/theme is not in use, that is not a permanent fix, of course, so can you tell us which one it is?

If it still doesn’t help, let us know.

-Matt R

Hi Matt R,

I re-installed your plugin. Good to know that it will still protect the site while we figure this out. Have responded to each of your questions the best I can.

1) The theme used on this site is exactly the same theme used on another wp website on the same server within the same hosting account and the other site is having no issues with Wordfence since the fix.

2) Plugins are the same too.

3) REMOTE_ADDR [my IP address] In use
CFD_ Connecting-IP (not set)
X-Real-IP (not set)
X-Forwarded-For (not set)

4) Checked the site’s error_log and no “wfsf=detectProxy” found.
In contacting my server, this is what I was told:
“The access log would not show that, we use a custom access log for our shared servers. It’s designed to log user access and the proxy rule would not be logged. Also the log is truncated every few hours.”

All the settings remained in place. Thought by deleting your plugin that I’d have to set it all up again, but nope!

Thanks,
Trish

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by Trish.

Hi Trish,

Thanks for the update. Since the host filters the access logs and also truncates (clears) them every few hours, it might be hard to track down why the automatic detection isn’t working for certain.

But since you’ve manually verified that the “REMOTE_ADDR” does contain your own IP address, you can safely choose that option in the “How does Wordfence get IPs” field on the Options page or leave it on the first option that lets Wordfence decide. You can also turn off the scan option “Scan for misconfigured How does Wordfence get IPs”, to skip this part of the scan going forward. If you ever move the site to a new host, I’d recommend enabling it again, or just checking the Diagnostics page again to see if REMOTE_ADDR is valid on the new host as well.

-Matt R

The latest update to your plugin WORKED to resolve this issue THANK YOU … YIPEEEEE!