Permalinks issue – flock/fopen functions

[Jason Koning]

Hi there,
A client is having issues with permalinks, & th hosting company has provided some feedback on this & I was wanting your opinion please.
“Over the past few months the website has been experiencing a permalink issue. I presumed it was due to the WP or theme updates. However, the hosting company has investigated and it seems that the issue lies with the Event’s Calendar. The plugin provides continuous issues with the permalinks – see explanation below. I usually login and reset the Permalinks to fix it, but it is an ongoing issue.”

“There are a few entries in the site’s error log to indicate issues with The Events Calendar plugin. It appears that when a new event is created or edited, the plugin initiates an update of the WP permalinks and this is causing an error (sometimes). It also appears that The Events Calendar plugin uses a couple of PHP functions which are disabled on our servers for security reasons (these functions, particularly flock and fopen are often disabled by hosts because of their inherent security risks), and this could also be contributing to the issue. The Events Calendar plugin should not rely on these functions.”

[Wed Aug 10 21:01:57 2016] [warn] [client 203.96.136.49] mod_fcgid: stderr: PHP Warning: fgets() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /var/www/vhosts/diamondharbour.info/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/common/src/Tribe/Admin/Notice/Plugin_Upgrade_Notice.php on line 176, referer: http://diamondharbour.info/wp-admin/options-permalink.php

[Wed Aug 10 21:01:57 2016] [warn] [client 203.96.136.49] mod_fcgid: stderr: PHP Warning: fopen(): data:// wrapper is disabled in the server configuration by allow_url_fopen=0 in /var/www/vhosts/diamondharbour.info/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/common/src/Tribe/Admin/Notice/Plugin_Upgrade_Notice.php on line 174, referer: http://diamondharbour.info/wp-admin/options-permalink.php

Any thoughts on what I should do to hopefully alleviate the issues they are having?
Thanks,
Jason

[Hunter]

Hello and welcome back,

I did a quick check of our logged bug reports and did some researching but was unable to find anything resembling what you’ve described. Does the issue still occur after reviewing our Testing for conflicts guide? Can you also include your System Information as a private reply?

Thanks for reaching out and have a great Friday.
Cheers!

[Jason Koning]

This reply is private.

[Hunter]

Hello and thank you for sharing your System Information with me 🙂

I can confirm that file does contain those two functions. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to do much here. I checked our logged bug reports and chatted with a few other support team members and we’ve come to the conclusion that it looks like this is either going to be related to your hosting provider and/or your theme/plugin situation. I notice you’re using WP Super Cache which can be finicky… one wrong setting can throw the entire website out of whack. I’ve pasted a few helpful resources below in regards to caching:

• https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/caching-basics/
• https://theeventscalendar.com/the-events-calendar-performance-considerations/
• https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/problems-with-minification/

However, we have seen a few hosting providers disable those functions, but due to the lack of users reporting similar issues, there’s not much we can do until it becomes a more common problem :-/

I know this isn’t the most ideal answer, but it might be worth asking your provider if it’s possible to enable those functions for your site only. Let me know what else you find out and I appreciate your patience while I worked on a practical answer. Have a great afternoon. Cheers!

[Jason Koning]

Hi Hunter,
Some responses from the hosting company:

Thanks for letting us know so promptly. I guess we can eliminate WP Super Cache as contributing to the issue then, as it has been disabled.

Perhaps the issue is with the Events Calendar plugin update check, or update process.

It’s possible that the culprit(s) are fopen and fgets. I attach the full log from your server for today. I recommend that you send this (privately) to the plugin author.

Of particular interest are (excerpts):

[Fri Aug 19 10:36:27 2016] [warn] [client 203.96.136.242] mod_fcgid: stderr: PHP Warning: fopen(): data:// wrapper is disabled in the server configuration by allow_url_fopen=0 in /var/www/vhosts/diamondharbour.info/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/common/src/Tribe/Admin/Notice/Plugin_Upgrade_Notice.php on line 174

[Fri Aug 19 10:36:27 2016] [warn] [client 203.96.136.242] mod_fcgid: stderr: PHP Warning: fgets() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /var/www/vhosts/diamondharbour.info/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/common/src/Tribe/Admin/Notice/Plugin_Upgrade_Notice.php on line 176

To reiterate: we have hundreds of WordPress sites working perfectly with flock disabled and allow_url_fopen=0. Many hosts disable these functions.

Look forward to your response.
Thanks,
Jason

[Hunter]

Hi Jason,

Thank you for providing the response from your hosting company. Not to “one-up” them here, but we have around 400,000 active installs and this issue is not a widespread problem. For instance, if you search Google for our forum threads, you’ll essentially come up with zero results relating to flock and fopen.

I don’t mean to dismiss your situation – that’s not my intention whatsoever. I’m just unsure how to proceed as I’ve already discussed the topic with the most advanced developers on our team and am relaying what conclusion we came to.

I apologize I can’t give you a magic solution that cures everything :-/ Feel free to respond with any more questions or concerns you have any enjoy the rest of your day. Take care!

[Jason Koning]

Hi Hunter,
I totally appreciate what you’re saying, I’m just trying to satisfy my client (forwarding on correspondence etc).
Thanks for your friendly responses 😉
Jas

[Hunter]

Thanks for understanding – it is a unique situation and I really wish there was more I could do to make it easier on you! I’ll keep this thread open for the time being, so feel free to reply back. Cheers!

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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