Site Health false positive: WP_DEBUG_LOG warning when debug.log is outside wp-content - Ticket #64071

[hbhalodia]

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64071

Screenshots

Publicly accessible	Not Publicly Accessible

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[github-actions]

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Props hbhalodia, westonruter, mukesh27.

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[hbhalodia]

Hi Team, Can you please help review and update the wordings if needed?

Thank You,

[github-actions]

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[westonruter]

If we wanted to go the extra mile, there could be a loopback request to try to actually request the file over HTTP to see if it returns anything. This may not be helpful in the end, however, as the file may not be present if nothing has been written to the log yet. Just an idea.

[hbhalodia]

If we wanted to go the extra mile, there could be a loopback request to try to actually request the file over HTTP to see if it returns anything. This may not be helpful in the end, however, as the file may not be present if nothing has been written to the log yet. Just an idea.

Thanks @westonruter, I thought of an edge case as well, what if there is no any log file present, then realpath will return false, and since we are checking a condition out there related if both the paths are present and if that is public path, then only to consider it as the debugging log is present in public directory, else we can show what we are showing.

[westonruter]

I thought of an edge case as well, what if there is no any log file present, then realpath will return false, and since we are checking a condition out there related if both the paths are present and if that is public path, then only to consider it as the debugging log is present in public directory, else we can show what we are showing.

Good point. Well, in that case you could always check to see if ini_get( 'error_log' ) === WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/debug.log' in case the realpath() returns false. This will catch the default case when someone uses the default when setting WP_DEBUG_LOG to true:

wordpress-develop/src/wp-includes/load.php

Lines 622 to 623 in 5a53b94

	if ( in_array( strtolower( (string) WP_DEBUG_LOG ), array( 'true', '1' ), true ) ) {
	$log_path = WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/debug.log';

If, however, they do something like:

define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG`, ABSPATH . 'debug.log' );

Then checking WP_DEBUG_LOG could fail if no logs have been written yet. In that case, if realpath() returns false, then actually there isn't a need to check realpath() on the full error log. All we need to do is check the path to the directory because that's not something which would be automatically created when a new error log entry is written. So I think this can be simplified by turning $debug_log_path = realpath( $debug_log_path ); into $debug_log_path = realpath( dirname( $debug_log_path ) ) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR fixes a false positive in WordPress Site Health where a warning about WP_DEBUG_LOG being set to a potentially public file is shown even when the debug log is configured to be outside the wp-content directory (and thus not publicly accessible).

Changes:

• Modified the debug mode check to determine if error log files are within or outside the WordPress document root
• Added different status levels (critical vs good) and messages based on whether the log file is publicly accessible
• Differentiated messaging between WP_DEBUG_LOG constant usage and direct PHP error_log configuration

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 1 out of 1 changed files in this pull request and generated 6 comments.

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 6 comments.

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

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[Copilot]

The property documentation lacks @SInCE tags and descriptive text. Consider adding fuller documentation: @since X.X.X and description like 'Whether WP_DEBUG is enabled.' for wp_debug, 'Value of WP_DEBUG_LOG constant (boolean or file path string).' for wp_debug_log, and 'Value of WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY constant or null if not defined.' for wp_debug_display.

Suggested change

	/**
	* @var bool
	*/
	private $wp_debug;
	/**
	* @var bool|string
	*/
	private $wp_debug_log;
	/**
	/**
	* Whether WP_DEBUG is enabled.
	*
	* @since 5.2.0
	* @var bool
	*/
	private $wp_debug;
	/**
	* Value of WP_DEBUG_LOG constant (boolean or file path string).
	*
	* @since 5.2.0
	* @var bool|string
	*/
	private $wp_debug_log;
	/**
	* Value of WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY constant or null if not defined.
	*
	* @since 5.2.0

[hbhalodia]

Hi @westonruter, Do we need to add @since tag here? So do I add @since 7.0.0, because we are adding the property to class, but ticket is on future release state, not sure if need to add it.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 14 comments.

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Pull request overview

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[Copilot]

The variable $site_health is created but its properties are never used. The reflection properties are set on $site_health_mock, but the ReflectionClass is instantiated from the unused $site_health instance. This appears to be a logic error - the reflection should be created from $site_health_mock instead, or the properties should be set on $site_health and then that instance should be used for the test.

[hbhalodia]

See comment -- #10684 (comment)

[Copilot]

Same issue as in the production test: the variable $site_health is created but its properties are never used. The reflection properties are set on $site_health_mock, but the ReflectionClass is instantiated from the unused $site_health instance. This appears to be a logic error - the reflection should be created from $site_health_mock instead, or the properties should be set on $site_health and then that instance should be used for the test.

Suggested change

	$site_health = new WP_Site_Health();
	$reflection_mock = new ReflectionClass( $site_health );
	$reflection_mock = new ReflectionClass( $site_health_mock );

[hbhalodia]

See comment -- #10684 (comment)