Scan process ended after forking.

@wfasa Thanks for reading our error logs. I appreciate your assistance.

I followed your advice and performed a clean install: I deactivated, deleted, reinstalled, and reactivated Wordfence. (I made sure to check the “Delete Wordfence tables and data on deactivation” option.)

I ran a scan and it got stuck, producing the “Scan process ended after forking” message.

I tried unchecking the option “Scan for signatures of known malicious files” to see if that would fix it. It didn’t.

Can you suggest what I might do next to solve this issue?

Thank you!

Hello again kuleanadesign,
it’s a tricky one. The best clue we have so far is that you were able to perform a scan when you disabled all other plugins. Could you try disabling all of them, then enable one, scan, enable another, scan etc. I realize this is a tedious process but it might give us some answers.

@wfasa Thanks for continuing to work with me on this.

From what I can tell so far, the scan completes fine with all plugins (except Wordfence) deactivated.

The scan also completes with these plugins reactivated:

SumoMe
UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore
Wordfence Security
WPtouch Mobile Plugin
Yoast SEO

The scan fails (or gets hung up) when one of these plugins is activated:

AddToAny Share Buttons
Broken Link Checker
Formidable
Google Analytics by MonsterInsights

Which one(s) is the culprit? I’m still trying to figure it out. I’ll keep you posted.

kuleanadesign,
could you please send me a diagnostics report so I can investigate this further? Go to Wordfence “Diagnostics” page and at the bottom click the button that says “Send Report by Email”. Change the prefilled address to [email protected] and please provide your username so I know who the mail is coming from. Thanks in advance.

@wfasa DONE.

Btw, I had narrowed down the plugins to two: Broken Link Checker and AddToAny Share Buttons . As far as I can tell, the scan gets hung up when either of these are activated.

Thanks for your help!

That’s amazing work kuleanadesign. Thanks so much for helping us! ??

You’re welcome! I’ll let you know whether or not I can reproduce these results.

The updated version of Wordfence (Version 6.1.6) seems to have resolved the issues we were having once and for all. Thanks!

@wfasa I spoke too soon — Wordfence is getting jammed again. I just emailed the activity log to your email address. Would you mind taking a look? Thanks!

Hello kuleanadesign,
I checked with my coworker and he says it can be caused by the server not being able to connect back to itself (sometimes a firewall, bad route, broken DNS, or bad entry in /etc/hosts pointing to the wrong server). Does any of this ring a bell?

Second question, are you still able to run a scan without error if you disable the plugins “Broken Link Checker and AddToAny Share Buttons”?

Also, can you send me an email at [email protected]. I have some info I want to share that I don’t want to post in the forums.

Hello wfasa. Thanks for your assistance.

1) The potential causes (firewall, bad route, etc) don’t ring a bell with me, but I’ll ask our host about them.

2) I disabled those two plugins, and tried a scan, but got the following error:

[May 13 09:37:50] Found 7 themes
[May 13 09:37:50] Calling Wordfence API v2.22:https://noc1.wordfence.com//v2.22/?v=4.5.2&s=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfbee.org&k=79b3f67b68a8a6b8f9bffb5ce37ddbc383eb7e049cd06c8639a51f9b72029ef384d8d81fc44ae64eb91181e9eb85935b8f271e2141c15a0e2149f4f80c3f68ae&openssl=268439647&phpv=5.3.29&betaFeed=0&action=get_known_files
[May 13 09:38:10] Scan process ended after forking.

3) I just sent you an email with subject line “Scan process ended after forking – sfbee.org”

Thank you!

Hello wfasa,
Our host tried temporarily disabling the mod_security on our site, but Wordfence still won’t complete a scan.

What else can we try?

Thanks!

We went back to our host and asked if they could do anything else to help. They said they “increased some php limits (like memory_limit and max_execution_time)” and voila, Wordfence now works.

Thanks for your help.

Hello kuleanadesign,
I had asked for assistance in solving this case but it appears it is no longer needed. ?? The working solution was unexpected but I’m glad it was resolved. Thanks for reporting back!