Import access list –> “Error parsing file”

Hi!

That means that you either enabled WP_DEBUG mode on the site A or your PHP error_reporting setting on that site is set to display notices (by default they are disabled). To disable both add the following lines to the wp-config.php file on the site A:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );
ini_set('display_errors', 0);

P.S. I’ll update the plugin soon to avoid that issue.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by gioni.

Hi Gioni,

thank you for your quick reply.

Yes, you are right! Debugging… Now that you said it. I had been having issues with another plugin recently and had debugging switched on.

With the debugging switched off on site A, I could export and import the access list without error.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Problem solved!

Cheers,
Sascha

• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by superninchen.

Unfortunately I have to re-open this topic.

Today I started another WP site and wanted to import my access list from my first site to this new one.

Both are running WP 4.8.1 and WPCerber 5.0.

I export the access list from site A and it looks alright in my text editor. No HTML fragments. Only a comma separated list of IP addresses in rectangular brackets, plus “cerber_version”, “home” and “date” at the beginning.

At the end of the file I see this string: ==/3397/1776576948/EOF

I don’t know if it belongs there, but anyway, with or without that string I get the error message on site C: “Error parsing file”.

What could it be this time? Debugging is switched off on both sites.

Thanks in advance!
Sascha

I see a difference between the two.

The source site A is running on PHP 5.6.30 and the target site C is running on 7.0.20.

Would this explain why the access list cannot be parsed?

First of all, you must not edit or change an export file in any way because it contains a checksumm and the plugin verifies data integrity in a file.

Could you inspect the Apache error log file for relevant error messages?

I first tried import without altering the file, as it used to be working fine the last time I did that (some months ago). It was only after the parsing error that I started messing with the content. ??

Unfortunately the domain provider does not allow access to the tomcat logs. I wonder if they even write logs.

By the way, the PHP version was not the reason. I changed it to 5.6.30 on the target site but the error persists.

Yes, the version of PHP is not the cause at all.

Have you tried to reimport the file back to the source website?

Try to export/import just settings only and then settings plus access lists.

Hi Gioni,

thank you for your immediate response.

Meanwhile I tried all variations, exporting and then directly importing the same file on the same site again. Settings, Access Lists, and Settings + Access Lists. All three fail to parse.

The server’s error log does not show anything.

Very strange indeed.

Cheers,
Sascha

I have a new trace!

Back in March I managed to import the settings and access lists from site A to site B. Currently I was trying to import those from A to site C, when said error occurred.

Today I created another new WP site D and tried to import from A again, which failed to parse again.

Then I exported from site B and imported that file successfully into site D.

I compared the two exported files with Notepad++, and the exported file from site A is in UTF-8-BOM format, while the other is in UTF-8 format only. There is the difference!

Question is: where is it coming from?

Wow! That’s an interesting issue.

I suspect:

1. An intermediate device or software like a proxy server.
2. The webserver and most likely a particular PHP setting (module).
3. Different versions of PHP.