Child Sites getting disconnected - how do I troubleshoot

I’m currently setting up MainWP as a replacement for Manage WP. Currently on free edition but plan to move to pro as soon as I confirmed it works and meets my needs. I’m self hosted so I’ve built out my infrastructure. I have an internal Ubuntu server (minimum OS) with a wordops install (latest) that I have configured MainWP host on, as well as a few test websites (minimum wordpress installs with a set of a few plugins I use on all my sites). I have a second VPS that is also running a minimum Ubuntu (same version as my local) with word ops and my production sites.

What I’m finding is my child sites on my locally hosted server keep getting disconnected. My production sites on VPS stay connected just fine. When they get disconnected I can reconnect them in the panel just by choosing reconnect. No other tweaks. So it feels like a timing delay or something causing them to ‘fall off’. I do notice my locally hosted server, the wordpress websites seem sluggish first load, could be related. I don’t think it is plugin or theme related as I have the same ones in the VPS server. I have tweaked the things I can think of like curl timeouts at the like.

Wondering if there are debug logs or something people can point me to as to why it is disconnecting these sites. I’d love to chase the specific error rather than guess the root cause. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Hey @jfrancais

Welcome to the MainWP community!

Does this local server get turned off ever? Or rebooted?

If it is not up all the time, it’s possible that MainWP Dashboard attempts to auto sync with the locally hosted sites at that time and therefore disconnects.

See if anything relevant gets logged on the Custom Event Monitor page (/wp-admin/admin.php?page=ActionLogs), with the logging set to Debug:

The server does get rebooted from time to time but there is no correlation between reboots and errors. And since this is the server the hosts mainwp I would expect if a reboot was the cause, it would be across other sites. The server is running 24/7 with the odd reboot.

I’ll do a deeper dive into those log files and see if I can find errors there that might be helpful.

Thanks!
Jared

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Still struggling with this. Here is the error I see in the mainwp server. I seem to be consistantly seeing problems for sites running on the same server as the mainwp site. To deal with that, I have moved mainwp to its own server. It has resolved it for all sites, except itself.

2025-03-20 11:36:51 CRON :: [MainWP] [REPLACEDDOMAIN] ::SYNC ERROR:: [MainWP Child plugin not detected or could not be reached! Ensure the MainWP Child plugin is installed and activated on the child site, and there are no security rules blocking requests. If you continue experiencing this issue, check the MainWP Community for help.] #0 /var/www/REPLACEDDOMAIN/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/mainwp/class/class-mainwp-sync.php(545): MainWP\Dashboard\MainWP_Logger->warning_for_website() #1 /var/www/REPLACEDDOMAIN/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/mainwp/class/class-mainwp-sync.php(217): MainWP\Dashboard\MainWP_Sync::sync_information_array() #2 /var/www/REPLACEDDOMAIN/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/mainwp/class/class-mainwp-system-cron-jobs.php(750): MainWP\Dashboard\MainWP_Sync::sync_site() #3 /var/www/REPLACEDDOMAIN/htdocs/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(324): MainWP\Dashboard\MainWP_System_Cron_Jobs->cron_updates_check() #4 /var/www/REPLACEDDOMAIN/htdocs/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(348): WP_Hook->apply_filters() #5 /var/www/REPLACEDDOMAIN/htdocs/wp-includes/plugin.php(565): WP_Hook->do_action() #6 /var/www/REPLACEDDOMAIN/htdocs/wp-cron.php(191): do_action_ref_array()

That is the error I see (with my domain redacted. I can reconnect the site just by clicking the reconnect link in the mainwp dashboard. But sometime in the next 24 hours, the site disconnects again.

Having trouble seeing anythign in the logs to help me pinpoint.

Can anyone explain what technical differences might be in place between reconnected using the dashboard, and the way the software disconnects something? It is odd I can consistantly reconnect the site with a click of the link. Would name resolution be different? is it not done via a http or https request? Any assistance would be appreciated. it is driving me nuts and is the last hurdle before I commit to moving forward with this to production.

Hey @jfrancais

I will check with the dev team for more information.

But before that, I just want to clarify that right now, you are only experiencing disconnects for the Dashboard site itself meaning that the Dashboard site is added to itself as a Child Site?

Also, is there a particular reason you want to do that? If you’re just interested in keeping the Dashboard site up to date, you will be alerted about any available updates for it in the bottom left corner:

Why not? This has always been a best practice to keep everything in one dashboard.

I have 25 sites added and the only one I’m having issues with now is the mainwp site itself, which has both the MainWP Child and MainWP Dashboard installed. I want to manage all the plugins / wordpress on the MainWP dashboard, which I thought was normal behavior.

The plugins I have installed are pretty minimal but critical to my operations (WP Mail SMTP, All-in-One WP Migration) they are also consistently installed in all my child sites so I’m confident it isn’t plugin related.

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Can you please post the community system report from your MainWP Dashboard for review? The report is located in your Dashboard under Info → Server (your-mainwp-dashboard.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=ServerInformation), on the top right of the page.

Be sure to use the button like the one below; this button hides all your private information:

image

Pressing the button auto-copies the report to your clipboard then just paste it in a reply here.


### WordPress Check                Required                                               Detected                                     Status   ###

FileSystem Method                  = direct                                               direct                                       Pass        
MultiSite Disabled                 =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
WordPress Memory Limit             >=64M                                                  256M                                         Pass        
WordPress Version                  >=6.2                                                  6.7.2                                        Pass        

### PHP                            Required                                               Detected                                     Status   ###

cURL Extension Enabled             =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
cURL Timeout                       >=300 seconds                                          1200                                         Pass        
cURL Version                       >=7.29.0                                               8.5.0                                        Pass        
Function `tmpfile` enabled         N/A                                                    Enabled                                      Pass        
OpenSSL Version                    >=OpenSSL/1.1.0                                        OpenSSL/3.0.13                               Pass        
OpenSSL Working Status             Yes                                                    Yes                                          Pass        
PCRE Backtracking Limit            >=10000                                                1000000                                      Pass        
PHP Allow URL fopen                N/A                                                    YES                                                      
PHP Disabled Functions             N/A                                                    No functions disabled.                                   
PHP Exif Support                   N/A                                                    YES                                                      
PHP IPTC Support                   N/A                                                    YES                                                      
PHP Loaded Extensions              N/A                                                    Core, FFI, PDO, Phar, Reflection, SPL, SimpleXML, Zend OPcache, bcmath, calendar, cgi-fcgi, ctype, curl, date, dom, exif, fileinfo, filter, ftp, gd, gettext, hash, iconv, igbinary, imagick, imap, intl, json, libxml, mbstring, memcached, msgpack, mysqli, mysqlnd, openssl, pcre, pdo_mysql, posix, random, readline, redis, session, shmop, soap, sockets, sodium, standard, sysvmsg, sysvsem, sysvshm, tokenizer, xml, xmlreader, xmlwriter, xsl, zip, zlib            
PHP Max Execution Time             >=30 seconds                                           1200                                         Pass        
PHP Max Input Time                 >=30 seconds                                           1200                                         Pass        
PHP Memory Limit                   >=256M                                                 512M                                         Pass        
PHP Post Max Size                  >=2M                                                   256M                                         Pass        
PHP Safe Mode Disabled             =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
PHP Session enabled                N/A                                                    Enabled                                      Pass        
PHP Upload Max Filesize            >=2M                                                   256M                                         Pass        
PHP Version                        >=7.4                                                  8.3.19                                       Pass        
PHP XML Support                    N/A                                                    YES                                                      
SSL Extension Enabled              =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
SSL Warnings                       = empty                                                error:12000079:random number generator::Cannot open file
error:12000079:random number generator::Cannot open fileWarning     

### MySQL                          Required                                               Detected                                     Status   ###

MySQL Client Encoding              N/A                                                    utf8                                                     
MySQL Mode                         N/A                                                    ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION            
MySQL Version                      >=5.0                                                  11.4.5-MariaDB-ubu2404-log                   Pass        

### Server Configuration           Detected Value                                      ###

Accept Content                     text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.7
Accept-Charset Content             N/A                                                    
Architecture                       64         bit                                         
Gateway Interface                  CGI/1.1                                                
HTTPS                              ON                                                     
Memory Usage                       6.88 MB                                                
Operating System                   Linux                                                  
Request Time                       1742824819                                             
Server Protocol                    HTTP/2.0                                               
Server self connect                Not expected HTTP response body:                       
Server Software                    nginx/1.26.3                                           
User Agent                         Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/134.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

### MainWP Dashboard Settings      Detected Value                                      ###

Abandoned plugins/themes tolerance 365                                                    
Cache control enabled              No                                                     
Enable Uptime Monitoring           No                                                     
MainWP Dashboard Version           Latest: 5.4.0.2 | Detected: 5.4.0.2 Pass               
MainWP legacy backups enabled      No                                                     
Maximum number of pages to return                                                         
Maximum number of posts to return                                                         
Maximum simultaneous install and update requests3                                                      
Maximum simultaneous requests      4                                                      
Maximum simultaneous requests per ip1                                                      
Maximum simultaneous sync requests 8                                                      
Maximum simultaneous uptime monitoring requests (Default: 10)10                                                     
Minimum delay between requests     200                                                    
Minimum delay between requests to the same ip1000                                                   
Number of connected sites          26                                                     
Optimize data loading              Yes                                                    
Plugin advanced automatic updates enabledYes                                                    
Primary Backup System              API Backups                                            
REST API enabled                   Yes                                                    
Site health monitoring enabled     Yes                                                    
Theme advanced automatic updates enabledNo                                                     
Use WP Cron                        Yes                                                    
WP Core advanced automatic updates enabledNo                                                     

### Extensions                     Version                                                License                                      Status   ###

No installed extensions            

### Plugin                         Version                                                Status                                    ###

All-in-One WP Migration            7.91                                                   Active                                       
All-in-One WP Migration WebDAV Extension1.47                                                   Active                                       
MainWP Child                       5.4.0.2                                                Active                                       
MainWP Dashboard                   5.4.0.2                                                Active                                       
Nginx Helper                       2.3.3                                                  Inactive                                     
Redirection                        5.5.2                                                  Active                                       
Redis Object Cache                 2.5.4                                                  Inactive                                     
WP Crontrol                        1.18.0                                                 Active                                       
WP Mail SMTP                       4.4.0                                                  Active                                       
WP Test Email                      1.1.9                                                  Active                                       

1 Like

this was captured just after I reconnected the offending site again.

1 Like

Thanks, @jfrancais.

I will consult with the development team and get back to you as soon as I can.

Hey @jfrancais

I’ve sent you a DM with a pre-release version of MainWP Dashboard that might help us get logs about these disconnects.

After you install it, please use the following hook:

add_filter( 'mainwp_hide_raw_connection_response_data', function() {

return false;

} );

Then, go to Custom Event Monitor (/wp-admin/admin.php?page=ActionLogs) and select “Debug”.

Then reconnect the Dashboard site if it currently disconnected, and the next time it disconnects please check the Custom Event Monitor page for relevant logs.

If they contain sensitive information, you can share it with me in the DM, or you can open a private help desk ticket) where we can continue troubleshooting this.

Thanks but unfortunately I can’t assist debugging this further. I ended up rebuilding a separate server just for mainwp and am no longer seeing the issue.

I do believe the problem is related to mainwp + wordops. I was consistently seeing this on all sites located on the same wordops server. Remote wordops servers, no issues. Something about wordops + mainwp was causing the issue. My new setup has a dedicated mainwp install via docker, not wordops. All remote sites remain wordsops installations. With that setup I haven’t had any disconnects since.

1 Like

Understood, and I’m glad to hear the issue is not present on that server.

I have passed this information along to our dev team.

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