Two (duplicate) emails each day

@jim Reekes

If this is about the Daily Security Digest email add the following line to your wp-config.php file:

define(‘ITSEC_NOTIFY_USE_CRON’, true);

dwinden

Thanks dwinden

Did what you suggested, and I still get double email notices.

Again, both are exactly the same message sent at the same time. Here’s the message (I just updated a plugin last night, explaining the file changes).

Dear Site Admin,

The following is a summary of security related activity on your site. For details please visit the security logs

Lockouts: There have been no lockouts since the last email check.

File changes detected: iThemes Security detected file changes on your system.

This email was generated automatically by iThemes Security

To change your email preferences please visit the plugin settings.

@jim Reekes

In that case we’ll need to add some debug info to the emails.

To enable debug info add the following constant to the wp-config.php file like this:

define('ITSEC_DEBUG', true );

The debug info will be displayed at the bottom of the next emails.

dwinden

After adding the ITSEC_DEBUG, I got the duplicate security emails the next day. But they did not have any debug info in them.

I checked wp-config.php to see I had ITSEC_DEBUG and it was there, just no debug info in the emails.

Then I noticed the permissions for wp-config.php were 640, and I was thinking it should be 444. So I changed it and waiting for the next day’s security notices.

This morning I found just one security email, but still no debug info.

I’ll update this tread if I find anything different in the next few days.

@jim Reekes

Ok, so both constants, ITSEC_NOTIFY_USE_CRON and ITSEC_DEBUG don’t seem to work …

Any chance the defines are not at the proper position in the wp-config.php file ?

Make sure they are positioned right after the WP_DEBUG defined line.

dwinden

I added the two defines ITSEC_NOTIFY_USE_CRON and ITSEC_DEBUG at the end of wp-config.php, and that was below define(‘WP_DEBUG’, false);

Basically, I have this at the end of wp-config.php:

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, false);

define(‘ITSEC_NOTIFY_USE_CRON’, true);
define(‘ITSEC_DEBUG’, true);

You didn’t mention if WP_DEBUG needs to also be true, but I suspect not. I found the code in iThemes Security that is checking for ITSEC_DEBUG but it’s not depending on WP_DEBUG.

Besides, enabling WP_DEBUG creates a new problem. Looks like wp-settings.php is looking for a file advanced-cache.php which I don’t have. I don’t use any caching plugins (not anymore). I’m on CloudFlare, which triggers this warning. The warning causes problems for displaying the pages, so I commented out the line including this missing file from wp-settings.php.

https://wpengine.com/support/debug-mode-warning/

I’ll let it run tonight to see what security email notice I get.

Thanks for baring with me!

@jim Reekes

Indeed WP_DEBUG does not need to be set to true.

The ITSEC_ defines are actually not at the end of the wp-config.php file.
It should look like this:

...
define('WP_DEBUG', false);

define('ITSEC_NOTIFY_USE_CRON', true);
define('ITSEC_DEBUG', true);

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

/** Absolute path to the WordPress directory. */
if ( !defined('ABSPATH') )
	define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__) . '/');

/** Sets up WordPress vars and included files. */
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');

dwinden

Well the mysteries never end. Today I only got one email. So far so good. That’s progress right? I mean that was the goal.

The one email had a line for debug info, which looks like a query to wp-cron.php

Sadly, that only presents a blank page. I have no idea why the debug info isn’t working, but the good news is this time I didn’t get duplicate email.

I’ll remove the debug flag and move on ??

Thanks again for putting up with me!

The other mystery – the second site, which I never touched, also stopped sending duplicate email. That changed for no reason.

This site is on a completely different environment (different host provider, server, install, PHP release, etc).

I guess that good news too LOL

@jim Reekes

The one email had a line for debug info, which looks like a query to wp-cron.php

Ok, so the ITSEC_DEBUG constant now seems to work.

The debug line at the bottom of the email will only show you the URL that triggered that specific Daily Security Digest email. When 2 emails are send you will find that the debug info shows different URLs in the 2 emails. It basically tells you which HTTP request triggered each email. Removing the ITSEC_NOTIFY_USE_CRON constant (but keeping the ITSEC_DEBUG constant) in the wp-config.php file will demonstrate this.

Anyway since you also set the ITSEC_NOTIFY_USE_CRON constant in the wp-config.php file the debug info confirms that sending of the Daily Security Digest email is now triggered by a WP Cron HTTP request (only).

And that is exactly what you want because due to a bug the Daily Security Digest email is often (not always) triggered as a result of 2 different HTTP requests. This can also be observed in the web server logs.

Since the issue seems to be resolved please mark this topic as ‘resolved’.

dwinden