Firewall rules not updating automatically

  • Resolved awpny

    (@awpny)


    4 months, 2 weeks ago

    Hello. On a couple of client sites I’m seeing a message similar to this:

    “The last rules update for the Wordfence Web Application Firewall was unsuccessful. The last successful update check was October 27, 2025 5:21 pm, so this site may be missing new rules added since then. You may wait for the next automatic attempt at June 15, 2061 7:27 am or try to Manually Update by clicking the “Manually Refresh Rules” button below the Rules list.”

    On the couple of sites where I see this message, the date for the “next automatic attempt” is always years in the future, which seems odd.

    I see lots of green checks and no red x’s in the WF diagnostics tab.

    The sites that are experiencing this issue are in the same hosting environment as other sites running Wordfence without any issues.

    How can I go about troubleshooting this?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    4 months, 2 weeks ago

    Hi @awpny, thanks for getting in touch.

    I haven’t seen a date so far in the future proposed as the next automatic update before, but it might point to an issue with WP Cron that would schedule this in. It’d be great if we could see a diagnostic from this site along with one from a site on the same environment that’s working.

    You can also send those to wftest @ wordfence . com directly from the link at the top of the Wordfence > Tools > Diagnostics page. Then click on “Send Report by Email”. Please add your forum username where indicated and respond here after you have sent it.

    NOTE: It should look as follows – Screenshot of Tools > Diagnostic > Send by Email

    Let us know here which is which (you can censor domain names if you mention them here on the forum so long as I can tell from the first/last characters which one I’m looking at in the diagnostics) once you’ve sent them.

    Many thanks,
    Peter.

    Thread Starter awpny

    (@awpny)

    4 months, 2 weeks ago

    Hey Peter- I had sent the diagnostic right after my original post. Did you get it, or should I send again?

    Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    4 months, 2 weeks ago

    Hi @awpny, thanks for sending that over!

    It looks like your file permissions for writing to /wflogs, scheduled cron dates, and database tables are seemingly normal.

    Have you also already tried the “MANUALLY REFRESH RULES” button suggested in your original post at the bottom of Wordfence > Firewall > All Firewall Options after expanding the “Advanced Firewall Rules” panel?

    If that also fails, navigate to your wp-content/wflogs folder via FTP or your hosting file manager and delete it (or its contents) entirely. Wordfence should try to repopulate it within 30 minutes (usually quicker). You may find that alone is enough to rectify the updates going forward.

    It has been known for caching to be an issue with these files, so it might be a good idea to check that /wflogs isn’t being actively cached by anything on your hosting environment and that caches on your site/server have been cleared recently. I see that you have a Must-Use plugin of object-cache.php. Flushing that and even temporarily disabling it could point to the cause.

    If you have persistent problems with file-writing, you can bypass it by setting logs to use the MySQLi storage engine instead: https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/mysqli-storage-engine/

    Thanks again,
    Peter.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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