HTTP ERROR 500

  • Resolved mohammedkadhim

    (@mohammedkadhim)


    9 months, 3 weeks ago

    Hello,

    I’ve been using WordFence for years with no problem until today after updating PHP from 7.4 to 8.1 I got HTTP ERROR 500 on both front end and even on WordPress dashboard.

    After going through all plugins one by one it turned out that WordFence was causing this issue.

    Tried to manually uninstalling WordFence and all of its data and tables then installed the plugin again this time the site worked until I ran the Firewall optimization process again I started getting HTTP ERROR 500.

    Stripping user.ini and htaccess from WordFence codes also seem to fix the problem but then this means the Firewall is not optimized which is not what I want.

    What could be the problem?

    Kindly note that sometimes when I get HTTP ERROR 500 I keep refreshing the page 4 to 6 times the site works temporarily but then again when I refresh once more it shows ERROR 500 again. Very strange!

    Kind regards,

    Mohammed Kadhim

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @mohammedkadhim, the last part does sound strange.

    The error 500 with .user.ini/.htaccess usually suggests that the auto_prepend_file path to wordfence-waf.php doesn’t match its actual location. Having said that, it would be an issue until it was modified or removed rather than intermittent.

    If you’ve checked the path there is definitely correct, it’d be great to see your diagnostic report. Send it to wftest @ wordfence . com directly from the link at the top of the Wordfence > Tools > Diagnostics page. Then click on “Send Report by Email”. Please add your forum username where indicated and respond here after you have sent it.

    NOTE: It should look as follows – Screenshot of Tools > Diagnostic > Send by Email

    Thanks,
    Peter.

    Thread Starter mohammedkadhim

    (@mohammedkadhim)

    @wfpeter

    Thank you for the reply.

    Indeed!, it either working fine or doesn’t. Can’t be something in middle. But as strange as it sound, when I get error 500 I keep refreshing the page a couple times and it work. But again when I refresh once more the website stops again.

    Also not sure why this happened after going from php 7.4 to 8.1.

    Regarding Diagnostics data, I’ve already sent it to the email you suggested yesterday. But also sent the data once more a couple moments ago including my forum username “mohammedkadhim” just so that you can easily find it.

    Kindly note that currently WordFence is enabled but without optimization since, as mentioned, it will break the website.

    Appreciate your help,

    Mohammed Kadhim

    Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @mohammedkadhim, thanks for sending that over.

    Some of our information about server platform, timeouts etc. is obtained from phpinfo() but I see that is disabled. There don’t appear to be incorrect or strange values from what I can see, but without optimization and the extra PHP information it might be hard to diagnose.

    Do you have any other functions besides phpinfo in the disable_functions section of your php.ini file? If you’d be willing to do that and temporarily re-optimize the firewall, we might be able to see if anything stands out. You can set everything back again immediately after sending the diagnostic once again with your forum username.

    Thanks,
    Peter.

    Thread Starter mohammedkadhim

    (@mohammedkadhim)

    @wfpeter

    Thanks for your reply.

    The problem is fixed and it wasn’t an issue with WordFence and I’ll explain below how it got fixed.

    When I updated PHP to 8.1 Apache got bugged and started randomly throwing error 500 especially when executing resource intensive process such as the Firewall optimization process by WordFence.

    All I had to do is restart php_fpm and Apache and things are working fine now. I managed to optimize WordFence without issue.

    Big thanks to you in fact I wouldn’t go through these steps without you notifying me about phpinfo() which wasn’t disabled in phpini but only then I realized that the server is bugged and needed restart.

    Thank you!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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