zwankie on "[Plugin: Wordfence Security] Cannot Login after Wordfence updated automatically (ips.php error)"

After Wordfence updated automatically I cannot login to the Admin side anymore.

The error logs shows:
cannot open .../wp-content/wflogs/ips.php for reading and writing.

How do we uninstall this or fix this now that we cannot log in?

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/

Hello zwankie,
if you need to disable Wordfence instantly while not being able to access WordPress admin you can follow these steps

1. Login via FTP or SSH to your web server
2. Rename the Wordfence plugin folder (wp-content/plugins/wordfence) to for example wordfence_disabled
3. Check in the root of your site for the files .htaccess and user.ini and if either of them contain this code, remove it and save the file

; Wordfence WAF
auto_prepend_file = '/home/asarosen/public_html/wordfence-waf.php'
; END Wordfence WAF

once you have access to your admin again, please report back and I will try to help you get Wordfence working again.

Just as an addition here, the code in .htaccess looks like this

# Wordfence WAF
<IfModule mod_php5.c> php_value auto_prepend_file '/public_html/wordfence-waf.php'
</IfModule>
<Files ".user.ini">
<IfModule mod_authz_core.c> Require all denied
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_authz_core.c> Order deny,allow Deny from all
</IfModule>
</Files>
# END Wordfence WAF

Thank you.

I have version 6.1.4 on the system now.

There is no such code in .htaccess and .htaccess is writable by the system.

I renamed the plugin folder and can now login again.
What is required to do now?

Hello zwankie,
I suspect there is some problem with permissions on your wflogs folder. Can you find a folder called "wflogs" in the folder "wp-content"?

Hi,

No, there was no folder there at all but it worked after installation without errors for 2 days.

I created the folder and set the permissions but obviously there are no files in it now.