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Latest post by stpls on Thursday, 24 April 2025 01:57 CDT
I’ve been receiving an unusually high number of emails over the past few days with the subject: “Critical file modified on”.
It made sense to receive this email the first time, as I had just updated the website. However, I’m now getting the exact same email repeatedly, with the same list of modified files. I’m receiving this email up to 200 times a day!
Is this something on your end, or should I be looking elsewhere for the cause?
This will only happen if these files keep getting modified, or if the cache with the file information is stuck. Here's how to reset this cache:
If the emails continue, do check the last modification date and time of each file. If it keeps changing, then the files keep changing which is why you are receiving the emails.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!
Thanks! I followed the steps you suggested. Hopefully this solves it, since it doesn’t seem to be related to the file modification dates.
You're welcome! Let us know how that worked for you :)
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!
Hmm, it looks like it’s not working. I followed the steps, but I’m still getting an email saying the files have been modified, even though the last modification date of the files is April 9.
#__admintools_storage and remove the two rows where their key is criticalfiles and criticalfiles_global.Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!
It’s really strange, I’m doing exactly as you described above. I delete the row in the database, but it gets added again immediately with the same value. See attached screenshot.
It is supposed to get added back when you follow steps 6 through 8.
As you can see, this is a JSON document which includes the paths to the monitored files, their last modification time, and their hashes. If either the last modification time or the hash of any of these files changes you are sent an email.
Or, at least, if PHP reports that one of these properties of any of these files has changed.
If you are sure the files do not get modified, something's wrong with PHP. It reports changes which do not exist. The only solution I can offer in this case is disabling this feature (steps 1 through 3).
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!
’ll disable it for now and have our developer look into the PHP. Thank you for helping me out and have a nice day.
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