HELP _ Events Calendar Plug-in permanently disabled by our hosting company!

[Kelly]

We have been experiencing a lot of down-time and a lot of run-time errors lately. We upgrated our server account, in hopes of resolving the issue. I was out of town last week, and returned to this message (exact message pasted below):

Hello Kelly,

I unrestricted your MySQL usage temporarily to get a feel for how much your plugin is trying to use – and it used up 24 CPU cores [ 24,000% CPU ].

I’m disabling this plugin permanently.

Thank you,

Michael Denney
MDDHosting – Professional Hosting
https://www.mddhosting.com/
Check out our blog! http://blog.mddhosting.com/

I do not know why this would suddenly be an issue. But, unless we can resolve this – I will be forced to find an alternative to the Events Calendar – which would be a HUGE disappointment as it has taken me many hours to get all of our classes entered. Please reply ASAP.

[George]

Hey Kelly,

I’m really sorry to hear this, and am eager to help. It sounds like all of that CPU usage might have been coming from a recent issue we had with Events Calendar Pro, where it was causing recurring events to be endlessly created!

This was a huge issue, so our developers worked hard to have a fix ready for the workweek this Monday morning. We have published version 4.2.2.1 of Events Calendar Pro this morning, which should help mitigate the sort of problems with recurring events that it sounds like impacted your site’s CPU usage.

1. Can you confirm if you were indeed using the “recurring events” feature on your site at all?

2. I would recommend contacting your host to share the above information. If you ensure that your site is using the most recent version of WordPress, is using The Events Calendar 4.2.2, and is using Events Calendar Pro 4.2.2.1, then there should be no issues like this.

So sorry for the trouble, Kelly. I think updating to the version numbers I listed in point #2 above should help, and hope it does. Please let us know!

Sincerely,
George

[Kelly]

Yes, we were using the recurring events feature on all of our events. I will share this information with our hosting company, and see if I can get the plugin re-activated to test it out.
Please stay tuned, and I will update you on further developments.
Do you know when this issue was first reported? Have other end-users found that your update has fixed the issue on their site?

[George]

Hey Kelly,

Thank you for the follow-up and please do keep us posted here!

As for the issues, these emerged late last week from numerous customer reports. Our developers worked hard since then and over the weekend to publish a fix early this morning, which customers are indeed reporting has helped.

Please note that there may be other issues on your site; but especially now since you’ve confirmed using event recurrence on ALL events on your site, it seems the most likely scenario that this recurrence issue is the core of the problem.

Keep us posted!
George

[Kelly]

Good Morning – this from our hosting company – please answer:
I would get this back to them and ask them if this is indicative of the problem they mentioned or if it’s something different:
====
144048378 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 24 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144045155 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 12 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144048407 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 11 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144050065 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 11 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144051225 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 11 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144051983 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 11 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144053516 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 11 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144056049 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 11 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144057532 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 7 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144058396 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 4 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144060257 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 4 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
144061282 livebhea localhost livebhea_ 4 0.0 Query Copying to tmp SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS * FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT wp_2_posts.*, wp_2_postme
====

Thank you,

Michael Denney
MDDHosting – Professional Hosting

[Kelly]

One more question for you – if it created all these events, are they still in existence, or did your update clean them? If they are still there, I would imagine we would continue to experience the same delays. Thank you!

[Kelly]

I have not received a reply to the last two posts I added to this issue? I am hesitant to re-activate without hearing back from you.

[George]

Hi Kelly,

I’m sorry my delayed response; I had an urgent and unexpected outage and was not able to respond until today. My apologies!

In regards to your issues, the additional server log content you posted may indeed be also helped by the update process I mentioned.

So, definitely do proceed with updating the plugins on your site to ensure that you run the following versions of our software:
* The Events Calendar 4.2.2
* Events Calendar Pro 4.2.2.1

When it comes to the already-generated events, these indeed exist on your site. They will NOT be automatically “cleaned up” with the 4.2.2.1 update of Events Calendar Pro, but one of our developers has written an extra little plugin that can be installed temporarily to help clean up those event instances.

You can learn more about the 4.2.2.1 update, and find a link to download that helper plugin, here: https://theeventscalendar.com/release-events-calendar-pro-4-2-2-1/

I hope this helps!

Thank you for your patience,
George

[Kelly]

I checked with our hosting company and this is the reply I got back (see below) is this typical of the clean-up plugin working on deleted extra events, or is this still another issue?
======
Hello Kelly,

I do not see the database issues occurring yet however your site is opening processes that use 100% of CPU constantly. After looking at one process it does appear to be the plugin.

access(“/home/livebhea/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-mailto-links/classes/Tribe//Events//Admin//Bar//Configurator/Interface.php”, F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access(“/home/livebhea/public_html/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/Admin/Bar/Configurator_Interface.php”, F_OK) = 0
access(“/home/livebhea/public_html/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/Admin/Bar/Configurator_Interface.php”, F_OK) = 0
lstat(“/home/livebhea/public_html/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/Admin/Bar/Configurator_Interface.php”, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=277, …}) = 0
lstat(“/home/livebhea/public_html/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/Admin/Bar”, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, …}) = 0
lstat(“/home/livebhea/public_html/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/Admin”, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, …}) = 0
lstat(“/home/livebhea/public_html/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/Admin/Bar/Configurator_Interface.php”, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=277, …}) = 0
lstat(“/home/livebhea/public_html/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/Admin/Bar”, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, …}) = 0
lstat(“/home/livebhea/public_html/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/Admin”, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, …}) = 0
open(“/home/livebhea/public_html/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/Admin/Bar/Configurator_Interface.php”, O_RDONLY) = 13

Thank you,

Tim M.
MDDHosting – Professional Hostin

[George]

Hey Kelly,

Thank you for reporting this. I am going to reach out to some developers on our team for assistance here; I am not able to reproduce issues like yours, nor able to fully diagnose these server-side issues accurately.

Thank you for your patience with these odd issues!

Sincerely,
George

[Brook]

Howdy Kelly,

George reached out to me about your issue here. Thank you for sharing the communication from your host, and your host for helping investigate.

I am typically in the loop on any performance related tickets with our plugin because it’s a huge passion of mine. Your issue is downright unique, not something I can recall any of our half a million users experiencing. There could be a number of causes for this unique behavior, including malware (which is all too common in the WordPress world).

Would it be possible to get a copy of your database? Perhaps your host can provide this if you don’t know how to obtain it. The logs your host has kindly shared are heavily truncated, and sadly are not helping in figuring out what’s going. They will probably be reluctant to reactivate the plugin. I’ve managed a hosting company myself and understand that completely. But we need someway to collect more data, and so if I can try a copy of your database on a test server of my own hopefully we can collect the information we need.

In addition to the database could you clear up a couple of things for me?

1. Did this happen with just The Events Calendar enabled, or did Events Calendar Pro need to be active as well for things to get out of hand?
2. Were pages loading on your site when this occurred? Or was every attempt to visit your site met with a white screen?

Does that all make sense? Will that work for you? Please let us know.

Cheers!

– Brook

[Kelly]

I will talk to our developer about the database. In the meantime, he – our developer – mentioned that only the Events Calendar was updated, not the Events Calendar PRO. I did not see any information about that update on any replies I have seen from you guys. I update the basic Events Calendar, the actual WordPress site and installed the clean-up plugin recommended. But there was no mention of the update to the Events Calendar Pro. Can you direct me to that download?

[Brook]

Interesting. That could be part of the problem. As George mentioned our most recent update for pro is 4.2.2.1. You can download a fresh copy of it from this website, in the upper right you should see “My Account” then inside that menu “Downloads”.  Go there to download the any versions of a plugin you own. If you download it this way you will need to perform a Manual Update.

Further, once all this is over you can input your license key in WP-Admin > Events > Settings > Licenses. Then you will get automatic updates to the plugin via WordPress, and can simply hit update in WordPress to get the latest version.

Installing the latest version of Pro should stop any “runaway recurrences” from getting created. And then installing the cleanup Tool George mentioned should cleanup duplicates. This might just be the solution you’re looking for.

• Brook

[George]

Thanks for assisting here, Brook.

Kelly—Brook is very insightful with performance issues, so hopefully with his brain and mine here we can help figure out what’s going on!

The steps Brook recommended above are excellent—please let us know how things behave after you do them.

In your reply above, you mention that we did not make it clear that BOTH The Events Calendar and Events Calendar Pro were updated—apologies for the lack of clarity on that! Here is a link I shared earlier in the thread, which should be helpful if you want to learn more about that Events Calendar Pro 4.2.2.1 update → https://theeventscalendar.com/release-events-calendar-pro-4-2-2-1/

☝️ That’s a short read, but hopefully a helpful one to describe that release and its purpose.

Ensure your site is up-to-date with the following software versions:
• The Events Calendar 4.2.2
• Events Calendar Pro 4.2.2.1

And let us know how things behave after doing so! 🙂

Thank you for your patience with these issues,
George

[Kelly]

This reply is private.

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