Tag Archives: loopback

CLI, Web

Fix wordpress PHP change was reverted error

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Since WordPress 4.9 I’ve had a peculiar issue when trying to edit theme files using the web GUI. Whenever I tried to save changes I would get this error message:

Unable to communicate back with site to check for fatal errors, so the PHP change was reverted. You will need to upload your PHP file change by some other means, such as by using SFTP.

After following this long thread I saw the suggestion to install and use the Health Check plugin to get more information into why this is happening. In my case I kept getting this error message:

The loopback request to your site failed, this may prevent WP_Cron from working, along with theme and plugin editors.<br>Error encountered: (0) cURL error 28: Connection timed out after 10001 milliseconds

I researched what a loopback request is in this case. It’s the webserver reaching out to its own site’s url to talk to itself. My webserver was being denied internet access, which included its own URL, so it couldn’t complete the loopback request.

One solution, mentioned here, is to edit the hosts file on your webserver to point to 127.0.0.1 for the URL of your site. My solution was to open up the firewall to allow my server to connect to its URL. I then ran into a different problem:

The loopback request to your site failed, this may prevent WP_Cron from working, along with theme and plugin editors.<br>Error encountered: (0) cURL error 60: Peer's Certificate issuer is not recognized.

After digging for a while I found this site which explains how to edit php.ini to point to an acceptable certificate list. To fix this on my Cent7 machine I edited /etc/php.ini and added this line (you could also add it to /etc/php.d/curl.ini)

curl.cainfo="/etc/pki/tls/cert.pem"

This caused php’s curl module to use the same certificate trust store that the underlying OS uses.

Then restart php-fpm if you’re using it:

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm

Success! Loopback connections now work properly.

Update 7/16/2018: I still had a wordpress site that was giving me certificate grief despite the above fix. After MUCH frustration I finally found this post where André Gayle points out that wordpress ships with its own certificate bundle, independent of even curl’s ca bundle! It’s located in your wordpress directory/wp-includes/certificates folder.

My solution to this extremely frustrating problem was to remove their bundle and symlink to my own (Cent 7 box – adjust your path to match where your wordpress install and certificate trust store is located)

sudo mv /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt.old
sudo ln -s /etc/pki/tls/cert.pem /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt

FINALLY no more loopback errors in the Health Check plugin, and thus the ability to edit theme files in the editor.

CLI, OS

Create a RaidZ array with missing drive in FreeNAS

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I came across a need to create a ZFS Raid-Z array with a missing drive. This is easy to do with mdadm but not as easy with ZFS. It is possible, though. The trick is to create an image file with dd, then map that image file as a loopback device. Once that’s done you can treat it as if it were a regular hard drive and add it to the array. Once added to the array you can take the loopback device offline and remove it from the array, then add an actual HDD later.

Create loopback device

Thanks to this site for the information.

First, use dd to create an image file. Change the seek parameter to whatever size disk you wish to emulate.

dd if=/dev/zero of=temp.img bs=1 count=1 seek=1024G

Next, initialize the loopback driver and create the loopback device (md0 in my case)

sudo losetup -a
sudo mdconfig -a -t vnode -f temp.img -u 0

List your loopback devices with the following command to verify your new loopback device:

sudo mdconfig -l

Create array using loopback device

You can now partition and add your loopback device as if it were a regular hard drive. Change volume name, array name, and device names as necessary for your environment.

sudo gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -l <volume name> md0
sudo zpool create <array name> raidz ada7p1 ada8p1 ada9p1 md0p1

Fail & Remove loopback device

Now that our new array is up and running properly we can fail out the loopback device. Make sure to modify the command to use your array name and loopback device/partition number.

sudo zpool offline <array_name> md0p1

Import new array into FreeNAS GUI

To get our new array in freenas we must export the array from the command line, then import it from the GUI.

sudo zpool export <array name>

Once the array has been exported, navigate to the FreeNAS GUI and go to Storage / Volumes / Import Volume.

You should now have your new array minus one drive ready to go in FreeNAS. You can now add a physical HDD when it becomes available (in my case, when it returns from RMA.)