W3TC / File Change

Hi @crdunst have you tried excluding the cache folder of W3 Total Cache when you go to Security > Settings > File Change Notification module and see if helps?

Hi, I can’t recall which client site this related to on my original post, but I do recall trying the exclusion of the cached directory, to no avail. I think we ended up turning off the notifications for the site in question.

Off topic, but the issue that comes up frequently is receiving the file change notification emails on sites, but the file dates are from months, sometimes years ago. We often receive an email saying x thousand files removed, then the next day x thousand files added. In both cases, really old dates.

This happens on multiple sites that are kept up-to-date, (but they’re not immediately after a round of updates) so they’re not genuine, just false alerts. Have you come across this before?

Hi @crdunst, could you please try enabling iTSec Debug and try to click the reset button on the Scheduler? Please also clear any server-side cache. Please let me know how it goes.

I hope the information I provided helped resolve your issues. Since we haven’t received a response, I’ll mark this post resolved. If you still need some assistance, feel free to open a new support topic, and we’d be happy to assist. Thank you!

Hi guys, sorry for the delayed reply, but I have identified two more sites doing this now. Both are having issues with the ‘file change’ check incorrectly sending emails.

Both have the directories/files in question added to their ‘exclude’ lists, but the file change email triggers anyhow in both cases.

One site is trying to exclude a ‘error_log’ file, without success. The other site is trying to exclude Rank Math xml file changes.

On the first site (error_log file) I’ve set your debug to ‘true’ and clicked the reset button as advised above, but I’m still getting emails.

One thought – in the debug screen, in the ‘settings’ section, I selected ‘file-change’, and the ‘expected_hashes’ value is incorrect – it still has the path from the previous demo URL it was sitting on before go live. Could this be causing the false-positive?

Thanks in advance.

Hi @crdunst, could you please try updating to iTSec (8.1.3) and see if the File Change Detection Exclusions issue resolves? You may also check this topic with the same issue: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/file-scan-exclusions-failing/

I hope this helps!

Thanks for the reply. Looking at that link you posted, someone mentioned deleting the plugin and reinstalling to refresh settings.

I just tried this, and in the debug ‘file-change’ settings screen, I no longer have the incorrect path from our demo server I mentioned, and crucially it does list the ‘error_log’ exclusion, so fingers crossed this works.

Feel free to close the ticket, I’ll re-open it again if this didn’t work and I need further advice – thanks again.

Hi @crdunst, thank you for the update. I hope the latest version fixed the issue on your site. I’ll now mark this topic as resolved. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have other concerns that you’d like us to assist with.