Not writing anything at .htaccess?

@john

Make sure the Write to Files setting is enabled in the Global Settings module.

dwinden

Yes, this settings has always been checked but still nothing on .htaccess at a couple of sites… (sorry edited this twice as I was not sure whether both sites were affected, but now it’s clear: 2 sites at same shared server)

@john

Could be a privileges issue.

Are there any error messages in the web server error_log ?

dwinden

No, nothing related to this.
Only memory errors as stated in the other thread at which you already replied.

I’ll first try the suggestions you posted there (DB schedules).

Your suggestion about disabling scheduled DB backups worked for the memory issue but the htaccess is still the same…

@john

Ok, one step at the time.

I think it is best to contact the hosting provider and mobilize them to look into this issue.

We know the iTSec plugin is able to write/update the .htaccess file on other envs. So it is unlikely that it is an iTSec plugin bug.
For some reason the iTSec plugin cannot write to the .htaccess file in this env.
So this must be related to something specific in this env (privileges?).

dwinden

Well, well…

Problem solved by contacting my host.
But I really don’t know what the issue was…

Apparently a cache issue with too many processes or something like that.

I tried to understand what they’ve done but this remains a mystery for me.
Excerpt of the chat:

– You are being cached most likely do to the processes.
– Anything to do from my side to prevent this in the future?
– Yes, there may be. We need to try to reduce some processes.

After that he suggested I use a robots.txt with this content:

#Code to not allow any search engines!
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Of course I didn’t, as this seems to block all search engines, but I believe something is wrong with too many processes taking place or something.

For the time being, .htaccess is being written normally at the 3 sites I had this issue but would love to understand where exactly the problem is.

Will keep monitoring those sites.

I’ve just had the same issue – any change to the iThemes Security config (latest Pro) does not change .htaccess. Moreover somehow my .htaccess did not have any iThemes Security code (and the plugin have been there for years including .htaccess change). I assume it must be the result of recent issue with resetting options after upgrade. Can you guys confirm this?

I fixed this by disabling “Allow iThemes Security to write to wp-config.php and .htaccess.”, saving settings and enabling that option again.

Weird!

I second Krzysztof Dryja’s comment however I only discovered this on one of my sites which are on separate hosting accounts within the same company.

I had tried disabling and enabling the plugin and resaving individual modules without success.

I did disable “Allow iThemes Security to write to wp-config.php and .htaccess.”, saving settings and enabling that option again as Krzysztof suggested and that “fixed” the .htaccess file but not wp-config.php. If I were to guess it would be the act of actually changing one setting and saving it that “unsticks” the plugin. It could also be combined with a caching conflict as I had WP-SUPER CACHE enabled.

It also seems that disabling the DB backup might solve this issue.

I had similar problem and then removed the checkmark at “Disable File Editor”

Disables the file editor for plugins and themes requiring users to have access to the file system to modify files.
Once activated you will need to manually edit theme and other files using a tool other than WordPress.

In my case having the checkmark there made it impossible for Ithemes Security to write to the .htaccess
Now once again everything is ok.
Maybe this will help others

cheers
Yolanda
P.S. had my host run scripts to see if all settings were OK, which they said they were, before I removed the checkmark.