The Wordfence Web Application Firewall cannot run

I am getting this same error and am wondering how to fix it for my site htps:realsimplegood.com

Hi!
There are two possibilities. Either the files in wflogs have become corrupt for some reason, or there is a permissions error on the files because multiple server users are writing to the files. Please follow these two steps

1. Download the wflogs folder, zip it up as a backup.
2. Delete the wflogs folder. It will now be recreated automatically.

If the site works now, it means some of the files were likely corrupt. If the issue reappears after this please

1. Try adding this constant define(‘WFWAF_LOG_FILE_MODE’, 0660); to the beginning of wordfence-waf.php on the line after <?php
2. Does it work now?

If it works after that, it means you have several server users writing to the folder and you have a permissions conflict. The constant allows group write access to the files in the wflogs folder. We prefer if you can keep the permissions to owner read/write only, but you can use the above constant to diagnose the issue.

Please do these two tasks one at a time and not all at once, so you can get to the bottom of why this is happening on your site. It won’t be the same problem on all sites, it can be different.

Thanks!

Hi @wfasa and thank you for the reply.

So, I followed your instructions and backed up the wflogs folder and then deleted the folder from the server.

When I logged in to the WordPress admin the error was gone and everything seemed OK. So, hurray!

However, there was also a notice for an update to WordFence, so I tried to update the plugin but received an error saying that “The plugin wordfence/wordfence.php has been deactivated due to an error: Plugin file does not exist.”

And now WordFence appears to be completely gone from my admin area. It is not listed in the Plugins and there is no longer a place for it in the menu on the left.

What now? Do I need to try and reinstall the plugin?

Hi @backpages,
Sorry for the late reply. Yes, this would indicate that the latest Wordfence update did not complete successfully. It’s hard to say why that would happen but if you have PHP error logs available on the site, you could check those to see if you can find any clues. We have seen a few reports of that happening lately but most have been on GoDaddy hosting and it doesn’t look like that’s where you’re hosted. Reasons for a plugin update to fail can be that the disk is full or that the server is running out of resources during the update.

Hi @backpages,

Did reinstalling the plugin solve the issue? We haven’t heard back from you in a while, so I’ve gone ahead and marked this thread as resolved.

If you’re still having issues with Wordfence even after reinstalling it, please feel free to open another thread.

Thanks!