SSL Monitor fails to update certificate expiry dates

Despite appearing to run correctly via cronjob (‘Last check’ is always within the past day) certificate expiry dates are not being updated in the interface, leading to incorrect warnings about ‘imminent’ expiries.

All cron tasks have been configured to run via unix crontab and wp-cron spawning is deactivated entirely. However, all other scheduled tasks are running as expected - and when I run the crontab command for the SSL Monitor on the command line (ssl_monitor_cron_start.php) the ‘Last check’ column is updated in the dashboard. However, the certificate expiry dates are not. I have manually verified that these certificates have indeed been renewed - so they are not actually expiring.

This appears to be an issue related to the cron task because whenever I run the check manually through the dashboard (3 dot menu → ‘Check SSL Certificate’) the expiry date is updated accordingly.

The automated checks are configured under the SSL Monitor settings to run daily, with ssl_monitor_cron_start.php cron job set to run daily and ssl_monitor_cron_continue_run.php set to run every thirty minutes (I assume this task picks up where start left off in the event the process is killed?)

I searched the forums and found this post, however, my issue is different because manual checks via the dashboard are working fine, so we can rule out server firewall issues.

Naturally, this is not a show-stopper. However, the main benefit of the SSL Monitor is that it automates what would otherwise be a manual task, so this benefit is negated as it stands.

I’ve included my system report below:


### WordPress Check                Required                                               Detected                                     Status   ###

FileSystem Method                  = direct                                               direct                                       Pass        
MultiSite Disabled                 =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
WordPress Memory Limit             >=64M                                                  64M                                          Pass        
WordPress Version                  >=6.2                                                  6.8.1                                        Pass        

### PHP                            Required                                               Detected                                     Status   ###

cURL Extension Enabled             =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
cURL Timeout                       >=300 seconds                                          60                                           Warning     
cURL Version                       >=7.29.0                                               8.13.0                                       Pass        
Function `tmpfile` enabled         N/A                                                    Enabled                                      Pass        
OpenSSL Version                    >=OpenSSL/1.1.0                                        OpenSSL/1.1.1w                               Pass        
OpenSSL Working Status             Yes                                                    Yes                                          Pass        
PCRE Backtracking Limit            >=10000                                                1000000                                      Pass        
PHP Allow URL fopen                N/A                                                                                                             
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, Phar, Reflection, SPL, SimpleXML, Zend OPcache, bcmath, brotli, bz2, calendar, ctype, curl, date, dom, exif, fileinfo, filter, ftp, gd, gettext, hash, iconv, imagick, intl, json, libxml, litespeed, mbstring, mcrypt, mysqli, mysqlnd, openssl, pcntl, pcre, random, readline, session, shmop, sqlite3, standard, tokenizer, xml, zip, zlib            
PHP Max Execution Time             >=30 seconds                                           300                                          Pass        
PHP Max Input Time                 >=30 seconds                                           60                                           Pass        
PHP Memory Limit                   >=256M                                                 256M                                         Pass        
PHP Post Max Size                  >=2M                                                   64M                                          Pass        
PHP Safe Mode Disabled             =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
PHP Session enabled                N/A                                                    Enabled                                      Pass        
PHP Upload Max Filesize            >=2M                                                   64M                                          Pass        
PHP Version                        >=7.4                                                  8.3.20                                       Pass        
PHP XML Support                    N/A                                                    YES                                                      
SSL Extension Enabled              =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
SSL Warnings                       = empty                                                                                             Pass        

### MySQL                          Required                                               Detected                                     Status   ###

MySQL Client Encoding              N/A                                                    utf8mb4                                                  
MySQL Mode                         N/A                                                    NO_ZERO_IN_DATE,ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION            
MySQL Version                      >=5.0                                                  10.5.28-MariaDB-cll-lve                      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                                                                         
HTTPS                              ON                                                     
Memory Usage                       11.38 MB                                               
Operating System                   Linux                                                  
Request Time                       1747235686                                             
Server Protocol                    HTTP/1.1                                               
Server self connect                Not expected HTTP response body: 503 Service Unavailable


     
        503
Service Unavailable

The server is temporarily busy, try again later!
Server Software                    LiteSpeed                                              
User Agent                         Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/136.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

### MainWP Dashboard Settings      Detected Value                                      ###

Abandoned plugins/themes tolerance 365                                                    
Cache control enabled              No                                                     
Enable Uptime Monitoring           Yes                                                    
MainWP Dashboard Version           Latest: 5.4.0.9 | Detected: 5.4.0.9 Pass               
MainWP legacy backups enabled      No                                                     
Maximum number of comments         50                                                     
Maximum number of pages to return  50                                                     
Maximum number of posts to return  50                                                     
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          10                                                     
Optimize data loading              Yes                                                    
Plugin advanced automatic updates enabledYes                                                    
Primary Backup System              MainWP BackWPup Extension                              
REST API enabled                   No                                                     
Site health monitoring enabled     Yes                                                    
Theme advanced automatic updates enabledYes                                                    
Use WP Cron                        No                                                     
WP Core advanced automatic updates enabledYes                                                    

### Extensions                     Version                                                License                                      Status   ###

Advanced Uptime Monitor Extension  5.3.1                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP BackWPup Extension          5.0.1                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Cache Control Extension     5.0.3                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Comments Extension          5.1                                                    Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Database Updater Extension  5.0.6                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Domain Monitor Extension    5.1.2                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Lighthouse Extension        5.0.2                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Maintenance Extension       5.0                                                    Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Matomo Extension            5.0.3                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Pro Reports Extension       5.0.6                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Regression Testing Extension5.0                                                    Active                                       Pass        
MainWP SSL Monitor Extension       5.1.1                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Sucuri Extension            5.0.2                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP UpdraftPlus Extension       5.0.2                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Vulnerability Checker Extension5.0.3                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP White Label Extension       5.0                                                    Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Wordfence Extension         5.0.3                                                  Active                                       Pass        

### Plugin                         Version                                                Status                                    ###

Disable WP REST API                2.6.5                                                  Active                                       
MainWP Dashboard                   5.4.0.9                                                Active                                       
Post SMTP                          3.1.4                                                  Active                                       
Wordfence Security                 8.0.5                                                  Active                                       

Hey @eggcupwebdesign

Welcome to the MainWP community!

I was unable to reproduce this behavior.
However, our development team would like to take a closer look.

Would you mind please opening a private Help Desk ticket?

Please refer to this Community thread by its URL in the ticket.

Thank you for the warm welcome, Bojan. I’ve just raised a ticket.

1 Like