Wordfence creating hundreds of .tmp files

Hi @d_bowyer, thanks for reaching out to us.

Excess .tmp files generally isn’t an issue we see across the large number of sites currently running Wordfence. When we have seen it, file locking doesn’t appear to be working as expected on the server configuration where it occurs.

You may have seen other problems configuring Wordfence if WordPress’ directory and all included files/folders weren’t already set to 755 permissions with www-data as the owner, but it’s worth checking this. Sometimes deleting the wp-content/wflogs folder and forcing Wordfence to recreate it (usually within 30 minutes) could also help.

The first thing to try after this would be shifting your Wordfence logging from the wflogs folder to the MySQLi storage engine. This is documented here: https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/mysqli-storage-engine/

We can always look into your configuration a little closer if these approaches don’t help but let me know if the .tmp files reduce or stop during any of the steps mentioned above.

Thanks,

Peter.

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated. I will forward on your response to the server admins at SiteGround where the majority of these problems are taking place. I appreciate this is not a common problem as there is very little discussion about it online which is making troubleshooting difficult.

I have not experienced any warnings or errors until now. Siteground have advised me to replace WordFence with their own ‘SG security’ plugin. The .tmp files are not being stored in the WordFence directory, instead they are being saved in a hidden root directory which I can only access via secure shell.

Fortunately I will still be running WordFence on the majority of our other websites. Thanks again for the fantastic service WordFence provides.

David

No worries @d_bowyer, I always appreciate kind words and pleased you’re generally happy with Wordfence on your sites.

Aside from SiteGround disabling the use of .user.ini, therefore requiring the firewall to be optimized in a different way, I’m not aware of the .tmp issue you’ve mentioned before now.

Please by all means create a new topic if you have further questions in future and we’ll always be glad to help you out!

Peter.