firewall rules problem: permissions on wflog

@dianeb

Thanks for reaching out.

Can you send diagnostics over to [email protected] with your forum name in the appropriate field via Wordfence > Tools > Diagnostics > Send Report by Email. Please let me know when that is sent.

This is something we have seen on some setups since our latest release, which would affect 7.2.3. This release improved reporting so that the plugin will notify you if it can’t finish the WAF rule update process. In most cases however, we’ve found that the WAF rules are actually being updated. We are working on putting out a solution to be released in the near future for this. You can check to see if your rules are being updated by looking at the timestamp on wp-content/wflogs/rules.php and take note of the time and date there. Then, go into your site and try to manually update in the Rules section (Wordfence > Firewall > All Firewall Options). You may get the error, but head back and check to see if the timestamp changed on the rules.php file. If it did, it likely updated without issue. As I mentioned, we are working on this on our end.

Scott

Hi. Just sent it. Thank you!

Hello,

I still have not received this — can you confirmed it sent on your end? There are two email tests on the Diagnostics page toward the bottom in Other Tests if you are able to try sending those out to one of your own emails and see if they send. In the meantime, let me know if you have checked the time stamp on the rules.php file.

Thanks,
Scott

Sorry…was out. I just sent again. Also tried sending a test email to myself and it worked. Then tried to wft@ from the button as well as from the bottom ‘send’. Also looked at rules.php. The date is old Mar8. Tried manual update and refreshed my ftp view and it’s still Mar8.

Thanks for following up. Hope this help you.

@wfscott I’ve sent my diagnostics as well, same issue of not updating since March 9. Should I make my own post, or is that fine? Thanks

@wfscott I’m having the same issue. I even had the issue after manually setting wflogs folder permissions to 777 (it’s back to the 755 it was when I first checked). The rules.php file is dated March 9.

I verified I could create/save a test HTML file to that folder via SFTP.

I have sent the diagnostics by email as you directed the OP.

Please let me know if I need to make a separate post.

@zirq @sidial01 — yes please, if you could create your own topic, that would comply with the forum rules.

@dianeb It looks like you sent over an activity report rather than the diagnostics. Diagnostics are in Wordfence > Tools > Diagnostics > Send report by Email (at the top of the page).

I will say that in no cases have I seen any permissions issues in relation to this error the past week or so, so the diagnostics might not be necessary. It seems to be due to the action timing out while trying to update, and in some cases, we are seeing it is completing but the error is still showing. The best thing will be to check the timestamp as I mentioned initially to see if your rules are updating, and if they are not, we are doing our best to get an update out very soon.

Let me know if you have any questions,
Scott

I did the email test to myself as you suggested and it arrived. And looked at rules.php after trying a manual update again. — It did not get updated.— It’s in the above thread.

Apparently I missed sending you the diagnostics. But did so just now.

Let me know if there’s anything else I can do other than wait for an update.

And thank you.

temporary solution : Go to Plugins, empty cache, deactivate wordfence, empty again cache, activate wordfence and from the same plugin page enter the error message in manual update and it will let you update… repeat the process several times if it doesn’t work the first time. But this is a bad fix

Trying the update multiple times may succeed as currently we are seeing the 5 second timeout is being exceeded on some servers. Depending on usage and other factors, if tried multiple times, one of them may succeed. As I mentioned, it may also be succeeding although you’re still seeing an error. However, @dianeb as you mentioned, you’re not seeing the timestamp change. We will be putting out a fix soon for this. Thanks for your patience.

Just a quick update from our side. We originally thought, because of reports that Dreamhost might be blocking connections to our rules server. Dreamhost’s team has identified some other possible blockages that we’re looking into. However, we’ve had reports of the rules now updating on Dreamhost’s servers. Please check your installation of Wordfence to see if you can now update the firewall rules.

Tim

@wfsupport Looks like both sites are working now.

Thank you.

Dear @wfsupport

YES! Indeed it does work now. Many thanks for following through on this.