cPFence UI is Here – Security Management, Now with a Mouse!

rdbf · 24 Feb

Instantly notify you when any of these services go down.

I'm getting about hourly email notifications regarding openlitespeed being down and restarted from only one server that's dedicated to one client, small VPS. I doubt that openlitespeed has been down though, as the websites on it have been running smooth for over a year without complaints.

Every "Current Processes output" attached with the email also just shows it running with long "elapsed" times. So I'm a bit confused about what's going on there.

cPFence · 24 Feb

rdbf

Yes, we noticed this on one of our test servers today. It seems that OLS is crashing and restarting itself repeatedly for some odd reason, causing the service to stay in an "activating" state instead of the expected "active" state. I haven’t had time to investigate further, but I fixed it by running:

systemctl stop lshttpd
systemctl disable lshttpd

Then:

systemctl enable lshttpd
systemctl start lshttpd

You can verify if it has stabilized by watching its state:

watch -n 1 'systemctl show lshttpd --property=ActiveState --value'

rdbf · 24 Feb

cPFence

After that it also keeps flipping from Active to Activating, with an openlitespeed (lscgid) process popping up every few seconds. However, the original openlitespeed process stays active, with the long elapsed time intact and the websites keep working all the time no matter what. Weird. Could be something misconfigured in the systemd file for openlitespeed.

cPFence · 24 Feb

rdbf

Try this after stopping and disabling OLS:

pkill -9 lshttpd

Then enable it back and see if that helps. Not sure what’s causing the issue, but it seems like something that needs to be fixed in v12, though I could be wrong. Might investigate it further when time allows.

Anyway, the next version of cPFence Owl will ignore the "Activating" state for OLS, at least for now.

cPFence · 24 Feb

Version 3.3.36 (24th February 2025)

Added

- Owl now monitors AppCD service:
The Owl module now includes real-time monitoring for the AppCD service, ensuring it stays online along with other critical services.

Improved

Further optimizations to WAF rules for the Enhance v12 architecture to prevent conflicts with certain pages and plugins.
The Owl module will now disregard the “Activating” state for the OLS web server and will no longer flag it as down.

Check out our latest blog post :
IPv6 Security & Database Scanning: Why cPFence Leads the Way

rdbf · 25 Feb

cPFence Not sure what’s causing the issue, but it seems like something that needs to be fixed in v12, though I could be wrong. Might investigate it further when time allows.

To me it most looked like the openlitespeed process was getting detached from the lshttpd systemd process, hence it's attempting restarts, which fail because it's already running. I noticed as well that the systemctl status lshttpd was different between servers in terms of prestart commands related to the swap, could be a remnant of the fix that was pushed earlier.

Killing the running and working disconnected openlitespeed process allowed the systemd process to restart it under its own wings so to say, and it stopped the cycle. A systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl reload lshttpd on all servers then caused them to all show the same status, and no restarts. Perhaps the enhance fix should have forced the daemon-reload and systemctl reload.

btraill · 25 Feb

rdbf I unfortunately have the same issue, and even after performing this its still doing the activating.... active loop.

cPFence · 26 Feb

btraill

Try this:

systemctl stop lshttpd
systemctl disable lshttpd
pkill -9 lshttpd

Then verify if the processes are gone:

netstat -tulnp | grep :7080

If not, kill it manually:

kill -9 <PID>  # Get the PID from the netstat command above

Verify again:

netstat -tulnp | grep :7080

Once the process is gone, run these:

systemctl reset-failed lshttpd
systemctl enable lshttpd
systemctl start lshttpd

btraill · 26 Feb

cPFence That did it! I wasn't killing the active process previously. Thank you.

btraill · 26 Feb

Blah... the issue resurfaced today on the server that was stable since running those commands.

cPFence · 26 Feb

btraill

Yeah, I see some members reporting the same issue in the community. Try opening a ticket with Adam to have it checked out.

rdbf · 28 Feb

Btw, what is cPFence downloading every hour? Seems to add up to about 2.5GB per server per day. Not huge or anything, but would it be possible to make this once a day or so? Or would there be potential downsides to that?

cPFence · 28 Feb

rdbf

cPFence downloads virus signature updates hourly, and it’s only a few MB more—not significant by any means. If you’re seeing more than this being used by cPFence, something is definitely off. If that’s the case, please open a ticket, and our team will help figure it out.

rdbf · 28 Feb

cPFence

Ok, that's weird then, it's +/- 100MB every hour on all servers, I'll send the screenshots in a ticket

cPFence · 28 Feb

rdbf

Your ticket has been answered now. Please let us know if you need further assistance.

Beni · 28 Feb

@cPFence for me and perhabs for plenty others it would be wonderfull to have a bulkaction for forcing or avoiding www (editing the htaccess file). But with the differnece between domains and subdomains (no forcing for subdomains). Perhabs you can add this feature sometime...

rdbf · 28 Feb

cPFence

Thanks for that. I agree with the hourly IPDB updates for sure. For the virus signatures I feel once a day would be fine if that saves like 80% of the incoming bandwidth every hour, but it's certainly not a big deal, especially since they don't take up extra space.

It's just that when looking out for issues/bugs due to the V12 updates, everything that's odd stands out suddenly, so that's why I asked.

cPFence · 1 Mar

Version 3.3.37 (2nd March 2025)

Added
- Bulk Wordpress Language Change:
Now you can easily change the language of all or selected wordpress sites in bulk.

Bulk Change Language

Improved
- Owl now monitors systemd for openlitespeed (ols) and litespeed (ls):
Owl will now ensure systemd remains in sync with the actual litespeed web server status, preventing unnecessary restarts. more details: enhance community discussion.

Alerts will only be triggered if ols/ls web server fails to start.

- Waf Optimizations:
Additional compatibility improvements for various plugins and themes.

badboybackagain · 5 Mar

So I just discovered that I opened cpfence --ui on all of the servers in my cluster. Coincidently I lost internet for couple of mins and I lost connection to all of my terminal sessions. Then I left it as is. After few hours, I found that all of my servers are showing a high CPU usage. When I ran the top command, I found a process with command "dialog" running on all servers is consuming 100% CPU. Is it cpfence UI? Because none of my servers are having anything related to dialog on it. @cPFence

cPFence · 5 Mar

badboybackagain

The UI CPU usage is usually close to zero. Please open a ticket so we can check it out for you.