Pre-installation Wizard, Setup Wizard does not complete, hangs, memory issue

[Greg Weir]

The install wizard is failing when I try to install. “top” shows the load on the server skyrocket and everything crashes (database goes away). I’m left with a core file in the document root too.

The output of the pre-install wizard is shown below. It get to Plugin Firewall cURL Scanner Successfully Scanned: 153 Pages & Posts and then hangs. I’ve tried setting up the php.ini with 128M and 64M – either way it still fails.

Our existing .htaccess is quite simple (our-hostname is replaced with the actual server hostname):

Redirect /index.html http://www.(our-hostname).com/index.php

DirectoryIndex index.php

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Output from pre-install wizard

Pass! Compatible Server Configuration: Server API: CGI | WP Filesystem API Method: direct.
Pass! PHP Configuration Memory Limit is set to: 64M. It is recommended that you increase your memory limit to at least 128M.
Pass! secure.htaccess Root Master file htaccess creation.
Pass! Root Folder BulletProof Mode activation.
Pass! wp-admin BulletProof Mode activation.
Pass! wp-admin .htaccess file backup Successful!
Your current Root .htaccess file is not locked. In order to ensure that the Setup Wizard completes successfully your files will NOT be locked by BPS Pro F-Lock. Your F-Lock settings will be set to “Turn Off Checking & Alerts”.
Pass! The cURL Extension is Loaded/Installed on your website/Server.
AutoRestore/Quarantine plugins folder Exclude Rule DB Option saved or updated Successfully!
AutoRestore/Quarantine plugins folder Exclude Rule created or updated Successfully!
/home/nicom/public_html/halifaxfarmersmarket.com/wp-content/plugins/bulletproof-security/includes/class.php File created or updated Successfully!
/home/nicom/public_html/halifaxfarmersmarket.com/wp-content/bps-backup/master-backups/class.php File copied to backup Successfully!
/home/nicom/public_html/halifaxfarmersmarket.com/wp-content/bps-backup/autorestore/wp-content/plugins/bulletproof-security/includes/class.php File copied to ARQ backup Successfully!
Plugin Firewall cURL Scanner Successfully Scanned: 153 Pages & Posts

[AITpro Admin]

List of common known issues that will cause the Setup Wizard to hang:  http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/pre-installation-wizard-setup-wizard-does-not-complete-hangs-memory-issue/page/4/#post-31341

The bare minimum amount of memory you should be running is 128M.  If you have a self-hosted, Private, in-house Server then you need to reboot your Apache Server after making Server configuration changes.

Ok something is very odd here.  I will delete this information in a minute, since this is very unsecure.  When I look at the DNS information for this site it lead me to [domain name removed].com, which then displays an Index of the site and it appears to be some sort of XAMPP installation.

http://[domain name removed].com/C:/xampp/htdocs/wordpress/halifaxfarmersmarket.com/

Do you have your own in-house XAMPP Server and are hosting your own site on that Server?  Please explain your setup:  Architecture, etc.

[Greg Weir]

Yes, please do delete the details above (and the detail in this post as well.)

The site is a VPS at Hostgator. There are a couple of WordPress installs on it. The one I’m working on first is http://www.halifaxfarmersmarket.com. It is a regular LAMP stack. I’ve reset the memoery to 128M in php.ini and restarted Apache.

[AITpro Admin]

List of common known issues that will cause the Setup Wizard to hang:  http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/pre-installation-wizard-setup-wizard-does-not-complete-hangs-memory-issue/page/4/#post-31341

Disregard the questions about your Hosting domain.  It looks like that is just some sort of Development area on that Server.  Most likely the problem is that when you increased your memory limit to 128M it did not really change from 64M to 128M.  You can check that by going to the BPS System Info page and checking your PHP Actual Configuration Memory Limit.  Please post this information about your website that is displayed to you on the BPS System Info page.

PHP Version: 5.3.24
PHP Memory Usage: 18.84 MB
WordPress Admin Memory Limit: 256M
WordPress Base Memory Limit: 40M
PHP Actual Configuration Memory Limit: 128M

[Greg Weir]

PHP Version: 5.3.26
PHP Memory Usage: 49.08 MB
WordPress Admin Memory Limit: 256M
WordPress Base Memory Limit: 40M
PHP Actual Configuration Memory Limit: 128M

[AITpro Admin]

List of common known issues that will cause the Setup Wizard to hang:  http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/pre-installation-wizard-setup-wizard-does-not-complete-hangs-memory-issue/page/4/#post-31341

By default HostGator sets the maximum memory limit to 256M (for Shared Hosting).  Since you have your own VPS then you should also use 256M instead of 128M.  256M is the perfect / optimum maximum memory limit setting to use – not too much and not too little.  I edited out the domain name from my previous post.  The Indexed directory is actually ok to be displayed publicly.  At first glance it looked unsecure, but it is not.

[AITpro Admin]

List of common known issues that will cause the Setup Wizard to hang:  http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/pre-installation-wizard-setup-wizard-does-not-complete-hangs-memory-issue/page/4/#post-31341

Ok try and run the Wizards again, but I still recommend setting your maximum memory limit to 256M.

PHP Memory Usage: 49.08 MB + whatever WordPress uses generally + factoring in peak memory usage – 64M was not enough memory overhead to run everything.

[Greg Weir]

I increased to 256M and restarted the whole container just to be sure there wasn’t somehting else that needed restarting besides Apache.  As soon as I try to run the pre-install script top shows a bunch of php processes running and the server load average goes through the roof then MySQL crashes and the error log fills up with “WordPress database error MySQL server has gone away”

Tasks: 43 total, 1 running, 42 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.4%us, 0.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 97.6%id, 1.6%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 2359296k total, 173480k used, 2185816k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 13356k cached

[AITpro Admin]

List of common known issues that will cause the Setup Wizard to hang:  http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/pre-installation-wizard-setup-wizard-does-not-complete-hangs-memory-issue/page/4/#post-31341

Ok try this next.  Deactivate all of your other plugins except for BPS Pro and then run the Wizards.  The logic is something else that you have installed is causing the Wizard to overload the Server – some sort of combination effect.  The Wizards peak/max memory usage should be between 1M to 3M.  The cURL scan is the most resource draining thing.  BPS Pro can be setup without using the Wizards, but it is time consuming so first deactivate all plugins and see if there is some sort of conflict/combination problem going on.

[Greg Weir]

Thanks, I am just waiting on confirmation from the client before I shut down the other plugins as site functionality will be affected. I should be able to try it with the other plugins disabled in the next 30 minutes.

[AITpro Admin]

List of common known issues that will cause the Setup Wizard to hang:  http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/pre-installation-wizard-setup-wizard-does-not-complete-hangs-memory-issue/page/4/#post-31341

Ok, but you can go ahead and click the Setup Wizard at this point.  The last thing that is done in the Pre-Installation Wizard is the cURL scan.  This is of course intentionally done that way in case there is a problem with cURL on a particular Server.  Run the Setup Wizard and then what will probably need to be done manually is to setup the Plugin Firewall.  The cURL scan gets the Plugin Firewall Whitelist rules that are needed and adds them to the Plugin Firewall Whitelist text box automatically.  This is fairly simple and quick to do manually.

[Greg Weir]

I just deactivate all the other plugins and ran the setup wizard. The same problem happened again – server load goes way up and it fails at the same point.

top - 12:39:10 up 51 min, 1 user, load average: 26.29, 6.34, 2.20
Tasks: 53 total, 1 running, 51 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
Cpu(s): 90.6%us, 8.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.8%st
Mem: 2359296k total, 246880k used, 2112416k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 12644k cached

[AITpro Admin]

List of common known issues that will cause the Setup Wizard to hang:  http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/pre-installation-wizard-setup-wizard-does-not-complete-hangs-memory-issue/page/4/#post-31341

Ok then that leaves some sort of Server configuration issue.  Out of curiousity are you using FastCGI on this site/Server?  I would like to login to this site to check the PHP configuration info for this site/server to see what may be the problem.  Create a temporary WordPress Admin login account to this site and send it directly to edward at ait-pro dot com.

[AITpro Admin]

List of common known issues that will cause the Setup Wizard to hang:  http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/pre-installation-wizard-setup-wizard-does-not-complete-hangs-memory-issue/page/4/#post-31341

UPDATED 10-17-2014

As of BPS Pro 9.0 a new option was created for the Wizards:
http://www.ait-pro.com/aitpro-blog/5009/bulletproof-security-pro/whats-new-in-bulletproof-security-pro-9-0/

cURL Scan Option: Turn On/Off cURL Scan: You can use the cURL Scan Option below to turn Off cURL scans when running the Wizards. If the Pre-Installation Wizard is crashing/not completing then select & save the Turn Off cURL Scan option and run the Pre-Installation Wizard again. The cURL Scan Option is set to On by default. The Plugin Firewall will need to be setup manually if the Wizards are unable to complete this automatically.

_________________________________

This issue had something to do with how the cURL scanning function gets the Post and Page URI’s from the WP Database, which for some odd reason was overloading the MySQL Server and causing it to crash.  The cURL scanner is run last in the Pre-Installation Wizard for just this type of scenario where for whatever reason the cURL scan does not complete successfully.  All other essential Pre-Installation Wizard steps are completed first before running the cURL scanner last in the Pre-Installation Wizard.

To complete the setup:

Ran the Setup Wizard, which completed successfully.  Setup the Root .htaccess file using the normal steps.  Setup the Plugin Firewall using the Plugin Firewall manual setup controls.

[Jan]

[Topic was merged into this relevant Topic]

Hi,

The pre-installation wizard with cURL scanner ON has made my VPS go into some loop. It had to be rebooted by my hosting company. Can this also happen with the cURL scanner OFF?

[Author]

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