Sporadic warnings on top of Control Panel

Hi @aclassifier –

This may be somewhat difficult to pin down since it happens intermittently. I tried on a similarly configured site (latest versions of WordPress/Jetpack and PHP v8.4.x), but I did not see the error that you are reporting.

As a first step, you will want to test for a plugin conflict. Please temporarily disable all plugins other than Jetpack, Jetpack Boost, and Jetpack Protect.

When you do that, are you able to get the error to come back? If not, please enable your additional plugins one at a time until you find the one that is causing the issue.

Let us know how it goes.

Thank you! For a start I didn’t disable all plugins since that’s a long way for me. With those specific error messages, in my opinion, I wonder whether it’s possible for the developers to more precisely find some hypothesis? (I am an embedded real-time developer myself.) However, if that is not possible I will proceed further, but then with some guidance. What should I test first in the below list (which is complete):

DEACTIVATED
PDF Embedder

KEPT
Akismet Anti-spam
Advanced editing tools (expands TinyMCE)
Collapse-O-Matic
Disable "BIG image" Threshold
Jatpack several
Really Simple Security
Table of Contents Plus
TablePress
UpdraftPlus
WP-Optimize - Clean, Compress, Cache

4 THREATS
* Collapse-O-Matic <= 1.8.5.8 - Contributor+ Stored XSS https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/f9e04f83-60f9-4883-81d9-8d00f3c312ca/?site=www.teigfam.net::oyvind::home
* Collapse-O-Matic <= 1.8.5.8 - Authenticated (Contributor+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Shortcode
https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/618af6ca-42c5-417d-922a-8da4513e8c31/?site=www.teigfam.net::oyvind::home
//
* Table of Contents Plus <= 2411 - Admin+ Stored XSS
https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/641e4fc3-4214-4c2e-8245-15e9dcdd37b4/?site=www.teigfam.net::oyvind::home
* Table of Contents Plus <= 2411.1 - Cross-Site Request Forgery
https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/d9b0b675-749c-40fe-82cd-e150ccb03033/?site=www.teigfam.net::oyvind::home

• This reply was modified 2 months ago by aclassifier. Reason: typo
• This reply was modified 2 months ago by aclassifier. Reason: Typo again;-)
• This reply was modified 2 months ago by aclassifier. Reason: Oh no typo again!
• This reply was modified 2 months ago by aclassifier. Reason: Blind?

Hi there, @aclassifier,

We understand your concerns about deactivating the plugins to perform the test my colleague mentioned; however, that is an efficient way to pinpoint the root of the issue, and our developers would most likely do the same if they had access to your site.

If you don’t want to do these tests on your live site, many hosts provide a staging service, where you can do testing without affecting the live site. You can ask your host about this. If they don’t give you a staging site, you could try WP Staging or Duplicator:

• https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wp-staging/
• https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/duplicator/

How does that sound? If you decide to try this initial troubleshooting, let us know what you find, and we can go from there.

Best,

..oh I don’t know! I am rather scared about fiddling with this. The other way around, would it be possible for you on your test sites to add the plugins I use. If not, I can disable mine since I only use those few. But shooting them all down at the same time, how do we see which one might be the problem? To be honest with you, this debugging procedure that you suggest looks rather primitive to me. With all those warnings, all Jetpack-oriented!

But right now I got even more warnings, in addition to those above. I have pasted the additional lines here. However, when i reloaded the page none of them appeared.

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /customers/f/c/9/teigfam.net/httpd.www/oyvind/home/wp-content/plugins/jetpack-boost/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-protect-status/src/class-protect-status.php:261) in /customers/f/c/9/teigfam.net/httpd.www/oyvind/home/wp-content/plugins/jetpack-boost/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-my-jetpack/src/class-initializer.php on line 187

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /customers/f/c/9/teigfam.net/httpd.www/oyvind/home/wp-content/plugins/jetpack-boost/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-protect-status/src/class-protect-status.php:261) in /customers/f/c/9/teigfam.net/httpd.www/oyvind/home/wp-content/plugins/jetpack-boost/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-my-jetpack/src/class-initializer.php on line 188

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /customers/f/c/9/teigfam.net/httpd.www/oyvind/home/wp-content/plugins/jetpack-boost/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-protect-status/src/class-protect-status.php:261) in /customers/f/c/9/teigfam.net/httpd.www/oyvind/home/wp-content/plugins/jetpack-boost/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-my-jetpack/src/class-initializer.php on line 189

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /customers/f/c/9/teigfam.net/httpd.www/oyvind/home/wp-content/plugins/jetpack-boost/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-protect-status/src/class-protect-status.php:261) in /customers/f/c/9/teigfam.net/httpd.www/oyvind/home/wp-includes/option.php on line 1715

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /customers/f/c/9/teigfam.net/httpd.www/oyvind/home/wp-content/plugins/jetpack-boost/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-protect-status/src/class-protect-status.php:261) in /customers/f/c/9/teigfam.net/httpd.www/oyvind/home/wp-includes/option.php on line 1716

• This reply was modified 2 months ago by aclassifier. Reason: Typo

Hi there, @aclassifier,

We do see where your feedback comes from about the plugin conflict test. There is another safe way to test that, a part from the staging site option which is the safest – it’s in fact about creating a mirrored copy of your site that is not accessible to the public, so you can do all the tests you want there without affecting your production site.

If you don’t want to test that on a staging site and don’t want to deactivate plugins either, another solution would be using the Health Check plugin – a tool that can be useful for debugging, though it does require an official default theme like Twenty Twenty to be installed as well:

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/health-check/
https://en-gb.www.ads-software.com/themes/twentytwenty/

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you can go to Dashboard → Health Check to see various details about your site and server. Select the Troubleshooting tab and then click Enable Troubleshooting to automatically disable all plugins and add a new Troubleshooting Menu item in the toolbar at the top of the wp-admin dashboard. 

From here, you can enable and disable plugins and change the theme for you, but without affecting normal visitors to your site. 

****

Did the errors that reappeared and disappeared upon refreshing the page happen again? Can you spot a pattern related to this behaviour? It sounds like it’s intermittent. I wonder if your host can shed some light on that, too. You may want them to chime in and see if they have additional info to share.

I have the exact same issue. I’m getting these lines EVERY DAY after a long break between updates of the page i’m working with. For example, I have a dashboard with comments opened in a browser (Google chrome). If it was opened in the morning and i didn’t do anything throughout the day, it’s 100% i’m getting these lines in the evening.

y: stdClass::$core in?website.com/www/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-protect-status/src/class-protect-status.php?on line?261

Warning: Undefined property: stdClass::$version in website.com/www/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-protect-status/src/class-protect-status.php?on line?276

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at website.com/www/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-protect-status/src/class-protect-status.php:261) in?website.com/www/wp-admin/includes/misc.php?on line?1438

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at website.com/www/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-protect-status/src/class-protect-status.php:261) in?website.com/www/wp-includes/functions.php?on line?7137

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at website.com/www/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/jetpack_vendor/automattic/jetpack-protect-status/src/class-protect-status.php:261) in?website.com/www/wp-admin/admin-header.php?on line?9

@tramaway, maybe you could cross-check with my plug-in list?

I use Twenty Twelve with a rather thin child theme. Is it easy to change to Twenty Twenty(+)? I guess that it would then change the looks and behaviour as well? Isn’t that part of the idea? Will another theme open for a better header photo than 960×250? Could be ok to change, and then I could install that health check plugin.

Aside:

Another thing, to the WordPress development team. I do love WordPress, I have been saying it’s one of the best software systems I have used over the years! And the support is just great! Like that this is taken seriously! Thanks, especially since I haven’t payed anything to WordPress!!

Therefore I get surprised when you ask me to test for errors by seeing them not appear again. In the old school one couldn’t test for correctnes, only prove it by formal methods or maybe by using specific patterns etc. For the SW approval agencies we used at work (IEC 51608 safety critical) “proven in use” was a term, but it required 100% logging of installed systems (on ships etc.). Not practical. But I have dirty enough hands to know that we did at least hope to test for correctness some times. And I guess that for WordPress “proven in use” also is problematic since you won’t have 100% logs. But still, my surprise to learning that that long warning list doesn’t take you to the error is a little surprising. Is it because of how the plugin system is designed, for it to be practical in use?

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by aclassifier. Reason: spelling

I have theese too:

UpdraftPlus
WP-Optimize

I believe there’s a conflict between caching plugin and Jetpack Protect

Ok! Those are by https://updraftplus.com. Since I don’t pay I have sent a mail on https://updraftplus.com/ask-a-pre-sales-question/ with this contents: “Please see https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/sporadic-warnings-on-top-of-control-panel/#post-18267106 where I and another user have the same problem, and both have UpdraftPlus and WP-Optimize installed.”

I have UpdraftPlus (1.25.1) and WP-Optimize (3.8.0) and I use Twenty Twelve.

By the way, it says that I have two themes at https://www.teigfam.net/oyvind/home/wp-admin/themes.php, Twenty Twelve Child and Twenty Twelve. But the button for Twenty Twelve label is “Activate” but is is active..?

After a response from UpdraftPlus I added this: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/sporadic-warnings-on-top-of-control-panel-2/#new-topic-0

Hi @aclassifier,

Thanks for your patience! I ran some tests on a similar setup (latest WordPress, Jetpack, WP-OPtimize, UpdraftPlus). I wasn’t able to replicate the warnings you’re seeing. Given that both you and another user suspect a possible caching conflict, it’s best to wait and see what the WP-Optimize folks find in the other thread you opened.

Best regards,
Alin

Thank you! This issue will stay until it disappears. It hasn’t yet. Even if pointing at Jetpack and concretely WP-Optimize and UpdraftPlus is on thin ice indeed, that’s the only ice we have at the moment. I will not let this case fade in the sand. I will update here, where i started it. So I don’t close it at all ??

I decided right now that I will disable WP-Optimize and UpdraftPlus for a week and see.

I added this to show the messages Safari 17.6 debug on MacOS 12.7.6 gave me (those version don’t seem to matter). Before I disabled the plugins:

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by aclassifier. Reason: Graphics added
• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by aclassifier. Reason: Typo

I am also experiencing this error on all my sites since updating to Jetpack 14.2.1. After rolling back to version 14.1, the error disappeared. I have the Redis Object Cache plugin on all my sites.

Thanks @mr2p for sharing your workaround. @aclassifier @tramaway, if you don’t mind, could you perhaps test rolling back to version 14.1 and see if the warnings go away?

Meanwhile, I’m checking internally with our team. Thank you everyone for your patience.

Internal reference: jetpack issue 9512