Plugin Randomly Deactivated Automatically

UPDATE: The WP Business Intelligence plugin is causing the following error reported in the WordPress Site Health Status screen:

An active PHP session was detected

A PHP session was created by a session_start() function call. This interferes with REST API and loopback requests. The session should be closed by session_write_close() before making any HTTP requests.

and

The REST API encountered an error

The REST API is one way WordPress, and other applications, communicate with the server. One example is the block editor screen, which relies on this to display, and save, your posts and pages.

The REST API request failed due to an error.
Error: cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 10001 milliseconds with 0 bytes received (http_request_failed)

I believe this may be why the plugin will “crash” and become deactivated sometimes. I determined that this plugin was the cause for the error by turning off and on each of the site plugins one by one. Deactivating this plugin solves the two errors reported above.

Hi there, thanks for the report. We have multiple test sites live running Lite and Pro and I am not able to recreate this issue on any of them. Our main site is itself a test site and runs just fine.

A plugin deactivating and being able to be reactivated is often a sign of plugin conflict. There is a chance another activated plugin and ours are conflicting causing this issue.

Please try deactivating your plugins one at a time to see if you can discover the conflict.

We are opening an investigating on this asap, but will need more details to help us track down what is happening (and if it is in our plugin to fix it).

If you don’t mind, please send in a contact request via our site with more details to help our investigatinon: https://www.wpbusinessintelligence.com/contact/

Include in your request:
1. WP Version
2. Database type(s) being used (including WP database and b.i. databases connected if Pro)
3. Theme and version
4. List of plugins installed and versions (denote free or premium)
5. PHP version
6. Error messages
7. Where and hpw you gained those error messages (i.e. debug, error logging, etc…)

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by joeyoungblood.

Thank you @joeyoungblood for your response. I’ve submitted a ticket with the details requested.

Quick update, I can confirm the existence of the Site Health message appears to be related to the Lite plugin. However, this is on test sites that are not deactivating the plugin.

I have logged this as a bug and the team and I will get to working on a fix for this specific issue, but it may not fix the deactivation issue you are reporting.

An update on my end: Looking at the Chrome Console one one of the pages that displays the query results, I see the following error in a WPBI JS. Not sure if it is at all related, if it is a critical error, or how this would cause sporadic deactivation of the plugin, but I figured I would share it.

(I can’t upload screenshots here or in the support ticket page you shared previously, so I am just pasting the error message and related code below.)

jquery-migrate.min.js:2 JQMIGRATE: Migrate is installed, version 3.3.2
(index):242 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'defaults' of undefined
    at (index):242
    at HTMLDocument.ready (wpbiDocReady.js?ver=1.0.0:26)
(anonymous) @ (index):242
ready @ wpbiDocReady.js?ver=1.0.0:26

The console flags the error as stemming from the third line below:

<script type="text/javascript">
docReady(function () {
  jQuery.extend(true, jQuery.fn.dataTable.defaults, {
	"order": [],
	"searching": false,
	"responsive": true
  });
  var table = jQuery("#datatable-1").DataTable({"pageLength":-1});
  table.buttons().container().appendTo( jQuery('#datatable-1-buttons') );
});
</script>

Hopefully this helps.

Thanks Fabian for the information in the ticket and the extra info. I will be sending you an email in the morning as it is getting late here (Texas time). We will do our best to fix this as quickly as possible.

Found a fix for part of your issue though it is tough to say how exactly this will impact your site or the usage of our plugin.

For the “The Rest API Encountered and Error” issue about cURL add the following code to the bottom of your functions.php in your child theme.

<?php
function mymodule_curl_before_request($curlhandle){
        session_write_close();
}
add_action( 'requests-curl.before_request','mymodule_curl_before_request', 9999 );

Found this on TRAC here: https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/50491
And solution here: https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/50491#comment:2

The session issue appears to be fairly widespread at the moment impacting a lot of plugins but not causing many visible issues. I was able to see this fixed the error on Site Health but am not sure how else it might impact the issues you are having. There’s a chance it might help stabilize your system while plugins like ours upgrade and this issue fades away.

We are still working on this issue, but I am turning in for the evening as it’s late here in Texas.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by joeyoungblood.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by joeyoungblood.

Hello,

I implemented the suggested change to my functions.php file, and it resolved the REST API error. Site Health is still displaying the “An active PHP session was detected” error. (The error regarding the plugin deactivating itself happens every few days and is random, so I can’t report on it unless I see it happening.)

Testing around the site I notice that now, WordPress pages set to PRIVATE with a password require that the password be entered every time they are loaded, vs the first time the page is visited. That is a draw back to the user experience as they must re-enter the page password every time they now visit it. I imagine we won’t be able to have it both ways, so unless there is a less “global” way of fixing the Curl error we are stuck?

Thanks for all the help and ideas!

This bug has been patched in today’s release of v3.1.9 Lite. You can read about the bug fix here: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/3-1-9-bug-fix/

The above conversation lists code to fix the cURL error, while this is officially recommended on TRAC please use this code at your own risk. It is not officially recommend by our plugin to use this code and we are uncertain of any related issues that may arise from its implementation.