Warning about Rules Update Failing

  • Resolved lcerura

    (@lcerura)


    5 years, 11 months ago

    “”The last rules update for the Wordfence Web Application Firewall was unsuccessful. The last successful update check was April 2, 2019 7:28 pm, so this site may be missing new rules added since then. You may wait for the next automatic attempt or try to Manually Update by clicking the “Manually Refresh Rules” button below the Rules list.””

    When I DO try to manually refresh I get the following message:

    Rule Update Failed
    No rules were updated. Please verify you have permissions to write to the /wp-content/wflogs directory.

    Yet, that directory is 0755

    Also, Dismissing the message gets me no where as well. It just pops back up again.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Thread Starter lcerura

    (@lcerura)

    Just discovered that other related thread and seems like no solution was ever found?

    The suggestions at that thread did nothing for me.

    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/the-last-rules-update-for-the-wordfence-web-application-firewall-was-unsuccessfu/

    Plugin Support wfphil

    (@wfphil)

    Hi @lcerura

    Do you have at least Wordfence version 7.2.4 installed.

    Thank you.

    Thread Starter lcerura

    (@lcerura)

    Hi, I’ve 7.2.5

    Plugin Support wfphil

    (@wfphil)

    Hi @lcerura

    Thank you for the update that you have the latest version of Wordfence installed.

    If the directory has permissions that are correct then typically this situation will occur if the “user/group” owner is different on the Wordfence “wflogs” directory than the user WordPress is running as on your site.

    If you check on the Wordfence “Diagnostics” tab on the Wordfence “Tools” page, you’ll see a section there called “PHP Environment” and in there a “Process Owner” will be specified. Make a note of the “Process Owner”.

    You may need to ask your hosting provider for assistance for the next part.

    If you click on the “wflogs” directory in an FTP client you may be able to see an owner that has “user/group” ownership for the “wflogs” directory. You may see numbers instead of the “Process Owner” shown on your Wordfence “Diagnostics” page. This doesn’t mean that the ownership is incorrect. If that happens then you can login to the server via a SSH (secure shell) command line utility. Check that the owner for the “user/group” is the same as the “Process Owner” from your Wordfence “Diagnostics” page.

    If they are different then Wordfence can’t read and write correctly to the “wflogs” directory. This can occur if there is a server side cron job on the server that is set up to trigger “wp-cron.php” (WordPress scheduled tasks) via PHP. If this is the case, that server side cron job can be changed to run via cURL or WGET instead of directly via PHP. This will make WordPress cron run more like it was intended by WordPress developers, and it will prevent the “wflogs” directory files from getting the wrong “user/group” ownership.

    Please let me know how it proceeds.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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