Disabling automatic scan does not work!

  • Resolved z2zoop

    (@z2zoop)


    1 year, 10 months ago

    I got wordfence installed on a network site. This is a very large network and there has been some performance issues, so it’s been decided scans will only be run manually and avoiding operation times when other sites are already automatically scanning, hogging the entire server down (afaik, wordfence is supposed to avoid this, but it doesnt).

    On the network admin and then on wordfence under plugin’s, I have disabled “plan wordfence scans”. These settings were saved last week, but after finding the server slow again, I see the site still started a scan on its own, so this setting is being ignored.

    I’m aware the Pro version is required for scheduling your own scans, but just disabling it, should be possible.

    Anyone have a clue what the issue could be? Perhaps it’s because it’s a network site (thinking of the top of my head, could the individual network sites wrongly hold settings for wordfence?)

    Thanks in advance!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Thread Starter z2zoop

    (@z2zoop)

    Just noticed other non-network sites behave the same way. Wordfence always scans ALL the sites en masse at the start of the business day (horrible timing), the setting to disable automatic scans is completely ignored.

    Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @z2zoop, thanks for getting in touch.

    When you disable “Schedule Wordfence Scans” on the options page and hit save, is “Wordfence Scan Deactivated” showing on your Wordfence > Scan page? If yes, I’m assuming the behavior you’ve seen is for quick scans to continue running daily and full scans running every 72 hours regardless?

    There is some randomization to when precisely an automatic scan will start running, but there are also some extra settings you can try as there are no set amounts of RAM, CPU or database queries that we know Wordfence will definitely require in each use-case.

    For a screenshot of my recommended Performance setting options – Click Here. You could also attempt to enable “low resource scanning” here to see if it helps in your case.

    You could also ensure max_execution_time = 60 in php.ini, Wordfence’s scan only ever attempts to use half of this value by default but there have been known problems with higher values being set.

    Your WP_MEMORY_LIMIT could be set to 128M or 256M in wp-config.php. WooCommerce, for example, recommend 64M minimum, so if you also have many hits on the site at once especially during a Wordfence scan, a lower limit like 40M commonly seen here could be reached fairly easily. Your PHP memory_limit value could also be adjusted to match the above value.

    As you mention this being a network site, it could help to ensure Wordfence > All Options > Scan Options > General Options > Scan files outside your WordPress installation isn’t checked, especially if each site is doing its own scan.

    Finally, you or your host could also check out your server/PHP error logs to see if anything is failing or causing a large number of errors in the background that could be delaying completion.

    Let me know if anything seems to make a change!
    Peter.

    Thread Starter z2zoop

    (@z2zoop)

    Hi Peter,

    Your first paragraph exactly describes the situation, the scan page now has “wordfence scan deactivated” title and a button “enable automatic scans” underneath it. So that confirms its properly saved, but it still scans regardless. All sites showing the same behavior. So how to disable automatic scans altogether? I’m almost tempted to just disable the cron job.

    We have 100+ wordpress sites running divided over 3 self managed VPS servers, and on all of it, it’s Wordfence that hogs it all down. They all approximately start scanning at the same time during business hours (8 / 9 in the morning) and it makes websites unreachable.

    WP memory limit varies between 256M (minimum) and 1GB depending per site and having a whopping 16gb ram available per server. Some sites run at a max execution time of 30 (which is default), the slightly heavier ones run at a maximum of 60. Scanning files outside folder is disabled on all sites (which was a good suggestion to check). I’ve reviewed your screenshot, only maximum execution for each scan stage was left blank, so 0 by default, the rest the same. Theres no problem with the amount of time it takes, just that it all comes at the same time.

    These performance issues started arising a few months ago (we have been using it for years (10?), performance issues is new, everything was scanning simultaneously in the past too, without issues), I’m guessing Wordfence had some major changes recently. We were considering buying wordfence pro for these sites, but seeing the difficulties we are facing right now we have put that decision on hold (especially since it involves a small fortune to cover all our sites).

    So back to the issue at hand, to solve these performance issues we need to be able to manage wordfence, starting with disabling scans, this is broken in the plugin. How do we proceed?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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