Multiple unexpected FTP calls?

Hi Pete,

No, that should not happen, you set the FTP details somewhere in admin panel or?

Hi Benjamin,

Yes, I agree it doesn’t sound right, but working with our host, we disabled each plug-in one at a time, and the multiple FTP logins stopped the minute ai1ec was disabled

FTP login details are held in the WP database, as they’re used to auto update plug-ins, and so I don’t have to add FTP credentials every time I add a plug-in.

Here’s what I received from our host:

I think the WordPress plugin may be causing issues. Any chance you could disable it to see if that fixes the massive number of FTP logins? — later — I’m not sure which one is causing the problems. I know that we have 10,000 FTP logins and it’s logging in several times
a minute:

essexham ftpd21632 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 still logged in
essexham ftpd21627 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 – 00:36 (00:00)
essexham ftpd21623 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 – 00:36 (00:00)
essexham ftpd21619 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 – 00:36 (00:00)
essexham ftpd21614 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 – 00:36 (00:00)
essexham ftpd21610 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 – 00:36 (00:00)
essexham ftpd21606 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 – 00:36 (00:00)
essexham ftpd21600 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 – 00:36 (00:00)
essexham ftpd21596 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 – 00:36 (00:00)
essexham ftpd21592 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 – 00:36 (00:00)
essexham ftpd21588 37.220.88.13 Mon Aug 15 00:36 – 00:36 (00:00)

It’s stopped since the plug-in was disabled, but of course now we have no calendar. Anything I can ask our host to help?

Pete

Can you please create an installation for testing on the same server and only install our plugin, check if the issue occurs again.

Sounds sensible. I’ll create a test site and tie up a time with my host’s support chap to try this out

Okay, please let me know how it goes.

Hi Benjamin,

Did as instructed and created a test install here:

https://www.essexham.co.uk/stress/calendar/

Our host reports no abnormal activity on the new test server, but when we re-enable ai1ec on our live system, they’re seeing loads of FTP sessions being kicked off.

I’ve just completed another test on the live site – All plug-ins except ai1ec were disabled, and the FTP problem persists.

Obvious difference between the live install and our test, is that one is populated with 600 calendar entries (and has live ics subscribers), and the test calendar has no viewers and only a couple of entries.

Any thoughts, or anything else I can try?

Thanks,

Pete

Following up on this, we may have tracked down what is going on. The issue seems to be related to ai1ec writing to the cache/twig folder. That would explain why the unpopulated test server isn’t generating traffic – nothing to cache.

My suspicion is that our host isn’t keeping the connection open after each file transfer (keep-alive?), so FTP is dropping connection after each file transfer, then opening a new session, causing a resource drain.

Host asked a fair question – why does cache need to write 10,000 times a day? Could it be that if the connection’s dropped, ai1ec starts again and never completes?

Is there a way to disable caching to allow us to verify this theory, or anything I should ask our host to do to enable ai1ec write to twig in a better way?

Question from host: “Are there any other methods that the
plugin can use to write to a cache – such as redis (in memory cache) or even directly to the disk?” All I can see is “Use advanced JS cache”, which seems to have no impact

Pete

Out of curiousity, rolled back to 2.5.5, and it made no difference.

ai1ec is set as follows: Disable gzip compression is disabled (already on server). Use advanced JS cache is disabled (seems to make no difference to FTP issue)

Hi Pete,

I’ll check with the development team what can be done, in the meantime, do you use a cache plugin? If not, please try “W3 Total Cache” plugin, should help.

We use CometCache, formerly Zencache

Hi Pete,

Please check the permission of these two folders: /wp-content/plugins/all-in-one-event-calendar/cache/ and /wp-content/plugins/all-in-one-event-calendar/cache/twig, should be to 775(or 777).