Could not write to the .htaccess file. Please check the file permissions.

644 should be OK (mine are also set to this). Do you have any other security plugins such as iThemes?

Hi @vupdraft.

No, there are no other security plugins.

It could be that you don’t have a .htaccess. Can you try flushing your permalinks, to do this;

In the WordPress admin area, go to “Settings > Permalinks”
Click “Save Changes”

Your Permalinks and rewrite rules should then be flushed. Can you then try making some changes to your settings

The .htaccess file exists and works fine. In fact WP Security even has no problem making a backup copy of it. It’s just that when it comes to actually writing anything to it that WP Security fails every time, even though permissions and ownership are correct.

I can verify this bug as well. I am on Ubuntu 20.04 LAMP, virtualmin control panel, same exact symptoms described above. I tried

wp rewrite flush

, but no luck.

Correct permissions:

View post on imgur.com

Write Failures:

View post on imgur.com

No other security plugins… how I am using litespeed cache… (However, I used the “Disable All FEatures” option in litespeed and still get this error.)

Update:
I tried change the .htaccess permission to 660, but no luck the problem remains… aiowps can’t write to .htaccess

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by dragonsway76.

Can you check if your .htaccess is enabled with AllowOverride#
If the AllowOverride directive is set to None then this will disable all .htaccess files. In order to verify this, open the Apache configuration file (typically called httpd.conf or apache.conf) and check that the AllowOverride directive is set to AllowOverride All. If you needed to make changes to your Apache config, remember to save the file and restart Apache using the following command;

sudo service apache2 restart

hhhmm no luck..

I am using virtualmin, which has “virtual servers with their own” apache.conf files, for this particular virtual server I verified that AllowOverride is already set to “All”

<Directory /home/admin/public_html>
    Options -Indexes +IncludesNOEXEC +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch 
    allow from all
    AllowOverride All Options=ExecCGI,Includes,IncludesNOEXEC,Indexes,MultiViews,SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
    Require all granted
</Directory>
<Directory /home/adminbca/cgi-bin>
    allow from all
    AllowOverride All Options=ExecCGI,Includes,IncludesNOEXEC,Indexes,MultiViews,SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Then I went to the master configuration at /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

And changed that to AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All disabed all caching and restarted apache2…

same problems :-/

Yeah, I concur. Still the same issue. AllowOverride All has always been enabled in my Apache config (CentOS: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf) for the virtual host in question, and is not overridden in .htaccess.

So, still not working.

Apologies for the ongoing inconvenience. I have asked one of our developers to have a look at this.

@cheddargeorge @vupdraft @dragonsway76 @cheddargeorge It looks like your PHP web server is not owner of the .htaccess file.

There are two options two resolve the issue:

1. Give the fie permission either 0664 (owner and group user can write) or 0646 (owner and public can write) or 0666 (owner, group user and public can write) to your .htaccess file. Please try permission in left to right order.

2. Set owner of the .htaccess file to the server runner. It is a little bit technical thing. For it, you can consult the server administrator or hosting provider support.

Hope this helps you.

1.) The site owner already owns the .htaccess file and by default it has 644 permissions as recommended by your plugin and others.

$ stat .htaccess
File: .htaccess
Size: 1152 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 569064 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r–r–) Uid: ( 1021/admin) Gid: ( 1021/admin)
Access: 2022-07-06 12:30:03.994688454 +0800
Modify: 2022-07-05 12:20:33.762703188 +0800
Change: 2022-07-05 12:20:33.762703188 +0800
Birth: –

Does Not Work

2.) I tried 646

$ stat .htaccess
File: .htaccess
Size: 1152 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 569064 Links: 1
Access: (0646/-rw-r–rw-) Uid: ( 1021/admin) Gid: ( 1021/admin)
Access: 2022-07-06 12:30:03.994688454 +0800
Modify: 2022-07-05 12:20:33.762703188 +0800
Change: 2022-07-07 07:12:47.399340478 +0800
Birth: –

Does Not Work

3.) I tried 666,

$ stat .htaccess
File: .htaccess
Size: 1152 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 569064 Links: 1
Access: (0666/-rw-rw-rw-) Uid: ( 1021/admin) Gid: ( 1021/admin)
Access: 2022-07-07 07:13:31.999339083 +0800
Modify: 2022-07-05 12:20:33.762703188 +0800
Change: 2022-07-07 07:14:48.303336696 +0800
Birth: –

Does Not Work

@plugin Support

Your suggestions are nonsense. I already said in the original question that the
permissions and ownership of .htaccess are correct.

Your plugin doesn’t work.

@cheddargeorge has a point. It does oddly seem that a very popular plugin has somehow lost the ability to be installed and configured correctly. This bug, plus my other bug with this plugin. seems to make your plugin completely useless to new users as fundamental installation & configuration cannot be completed. I like open-source projects I hope you guys can sort this out.

Can you please try to give permission of 0777 temporary and then try? If it works, you must revert the .htaccess file permission to the 0644.

$ stat .htaccess
File: .htaccess
Size: 1152 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 569064 Links: 1
Access: (0777/-rwxrwxrwx) Uid: ( 1021/admin) Gid: ( 1021/admin)
Access: 2022-07-08 07:20:19.676927303 +0800
Modify: 2022-07-05 12:20:33.762703188 +0800
Change: 2022-07-08 10:36:55.716629192 +0800
Birth: –

Does not work… same error. :-/