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Twitter- Server operating system version
- Centos 6.10
- Plesk version and microupdate number
- 18.0.31
Hi all - have a few questions:
I have a machine that is wildly out of date running Centos 6.10 and 18.0.31 Obsidian - and yes it's way overdue for a migration and limping along with a lot of little patches - but I wanted to see if there is anything I can do in the short term for a specific WP Toolkit issue.
This older instance is also running an older instance of WP Toolkit, from when it was still named "Wordpress Toolkit" at version 5.8.1-5837 for that last release for 18.0.31 on Centos 6.10
It had been working fine for the most part, but recently the screenshots stopped displaying properly, despite seeing the traffic from AWS with the user-agent: "Plesk screenshot bot https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10301006946066" and confirming nothing was being blocked by fail2ban or firewall - the requests come through fine, and a file was being generated in the expected location at:
/usr/local/psa/var/modules/wp-toolkit/screenshots/DOMAIN_NAME/1/1024x768.jpg
and other variants for additional Wordpress Installs being managed.
I traced every aspect of why it might not be functioning and it turned out that whatever process on the screenshot servers that used to return a .jpg file which was then stored in that location above, and retrieved from that location via a call to:
https://DOMAIN_NAME:8443/modules/wp-toolkit/index.php/index/screenshot/id/1?v=XXXXXXXX
Is no longer functioning the same, as it's not actually a .jpg its receiving and storing, but rather a .json file with a flat list of nodes representing the raw bytes as decimals. Hence the loading and display breaks since the browser is expecting an actual image to be returned, not a file with .json data.
I confirmed this by dropping in a jpg into the same location to replace the json, and refreshing the page, and it loads that image as a proper image/jpeg screenshot.
I further confirmed the json being returned and stored is definitely jpg image data, by putting together a little bash script that uses jq to strip the json structure and convert it to a raw series of decimals which is then converted a proper ascii bytestream representation and writes that out as a binary file to the same location and expected filename, and sure enough refresh the page or try to retrieve the image from the expected URL and it correctly displays the expected screenshot as a jpg.
So, yes, my plans are migrating to latest Plesk on Almalimnux, which is in the works, and will fix this and a billion other things I am sure, but in the short term:
1. Can someone confirm that the screenshot server (unsure if its shots.plesk.com for this older version even though thats listed as one of the items in the panel.ini) used by version 5.8.1-5837 of Wordpress Toolkit recently changed its functionality to exactly what I've described, no longer returning an image, but rather the .json decimal representation? Thinking perhaps at some point there was a cutover recently within the last few months to this new return type - anyone able to confirm this?
2. The ability to disable screenshot generation for this older Wordpress Toolkit version seems to only be present in newer versions, as setting the following:
[screenshotService]
url = ""
In my panel.ini setting that does not seem to have any effect (unless my expectations about what that actually does when present is wrong).
3. Any workarounds or similar settings for disabling screenshots in 5.8.1-5837 or making any minor changes to force a request for the image data and not json from the screenshot server?
Thanks for any insight!
I have a machine that is wildly out of date running Centos 6.10 and 18.0.31 Obsidian - and yes it's way overdue for a migration and limping along with a lot of little patches - but I wanted to see if there is anything I can do in the short term for a specific WP Toolkit issue.
This older instance is also running an older instance of WP Toolkit, from when it was still named "Wordpress Toolkit" at version 5.8.1-5837 for that last release for 18.0.31 on Centos 6.10
It had been working fine for the most part, but recently the screenshots stopped displaying properly, despite seeing the traffic from AWS with the user-agent: "Plesk screenshot bot https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10301006946066" and confirming nothing was being blocked by fail2ban or firewall - the requests come through fine, and a file was being generated in the expected location at:
/usr/local/psa/var/modules/wp-toolkit/screenshots/DOMAIN_NAME/1/1024x768.jpg
and other variants for additional Wordpress Installs being managed.
I traced every aspect of why it might not be functioning and it turned out that whatever process on the screenshot servers that used to return a .jpg file which was then stored in that location above, and retrieved from that location via a call to:
https://DOMAIN_NAME:8443/modules/wp-toolkit/index.php/index/screenshot/id/1?v=XXXXXXXX
Is no longer functioning the same, as it's not actually a .jpg its receiving and storing, but rather a .json file with a flat list of nodes representing the raw bytes as decimals. Hence the loading and display breaks since the browser is expecting an actual image to be returned, not a file with .json data.
I confirmed this by dropping in a jpg into the same location to replace the json, and refreshing the page, and it loads that image as a proper image/jpeg screenshot.
I further confirmed the json being returned and stored is definitely jpg image data, by putting together a little bash script that uses jq to strip the json structure and convert it to a raw series of decimals which is then converted a proper ascii bytestream representation and writes that out as a binary file to the same location and expected filename, and sure enough refresh the page or try to retrieve the image from the expected URL and it correctly displays the expected screenshot as a jpg.
So, yes, my plans are migrating to latest Plesk on Almalimnux, which is in the works, and will fix this and a billion other things I am sure, but in the short term:
1. Can someone confirm that the screenshot server (unsure if its shots.plesk.com for this older version even though thats listed as one of the items in the panel.ini) used by version 5.8.1-5837 of Wordpress Toolkit recently changed its functionality to exactly what I've described, no longer returning an image, but rather the .json decimal representation? Thinking perhaps at some point there was a cutover recently within the last few months to this new return type - anyone able to confirm this?
2. The ability to disable screenshot generation for this older Wordpress Toolkit version seems to only be present in newer versions, as setting the following:
[screenshotService]
url = ""
In my panel.ini setting that does not seem to have any effect (unless my expectations about what that actually does when present is wrong).
3. Any workarounds or similar settings for disabling screenshots in 5.8.1-5837 or making any minor changes to force a request for the image data and not json from the screenshot server?
Thanks for any insight!
