Title: admin.php tries to increase memory_limit Last modified: August 19, 2016 --- # admin.php tries to increase memory_limit * Resolved [helpy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/helpy/) * (@helpy) * [16 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/) * In my server logs there is the following error: * [Thu Jun 03 13:14:08 2010] [error] [client 79.208.***.***] ALERT – script tried to increase memory_limit to 268435456 bytes which is above the allowed value ( attacker ‘79.208.***.***’, file ‘/is/htdocs/wp*******_**********/example.com/ www/wp-admin/admin.php’, line 91), referer: [http://example.com/wp-admin/index.php](http://example.com/wp-admin/index.php) * Is there a way to avoid this? cu, guido Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total) * Moderator [Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ipstenu/) * (@ipstenu) * 🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist * [16 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522455) * IIRC, admin.php does that when you’re running upgrades, but I could be wrong… What were you doing when that happened? * Thread Starter [helpy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/helpy/) * (@helpy) * [16 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522506) * When I refresh the dashboard, there will be 5 (five) entries in the server log with the mentioned error message. * Moderator [Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ipstenu/) * (@ipstenu) * 🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist * [16 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522728) * I poked around but I can’t repro that. * What is your memory limit on that server? * Thread Starter [helpy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/helpy/) * (@helpy) * [16 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522755) * The memory limit (listed in phpinfo()) is 128 MByte. * And some more information: * – PHP Version 5.2.12 – Apache/2.2 – WP 3.0 RC2 (was the same with RC1) – Multisite is ON … using subdomains (1 main blog, 1 blog on a sub domain) – Buddypress … and some other Plugins * Moderator [Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ipstenu/) * (@ipstenu) * 🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist * [16 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522761) * It may be a plugin that’s causing that error. * Thread Starter [helpy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/helpy/) * (@helpy) * [16 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522791) * OK! I disabled all plugins (except buddypress) … it did not change anything! * Then I searched the code of wordpress and all installed plugins! * 1. admin.php – line 90 + 91: * if ( current_user_can( ‘manage_options’ ) ) @ini_set( ‘memory_limit’, apply_filters(‘ admin_memory_limit’, ‘256M’ ) ); * Nowhere else in the code the tag ‘admin_memory_limit’ is used! This means, the function apply_filters will return the value ‘256M’ … … if I interpret this code correctly??? * cu, guido * Moderator [Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ipstenu/) * (@ipstenu) * 🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist * [16 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522797) * That looks like a correct interpretation, but I’ll have to sit and read the whole check and ifs to see if there’s a reason that gets called every time you run admin.php. * This is now out of my depth, sorry 🙁 * Thread Starter [helpy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/helpy/) * (@helpy) * [16 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522799) * Thank you for your time! * Solution, I do not like: ignore the “error” message in the server logs * cu, guido * [Carlos Mundi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/carlos-mundi/) * (@carlos-mundi) * [15 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522837) * I must have forgotten to hit the “post” button last night. Apologies to those I referred to this thread before I actually posted. 🙂 * I believe I am seeing the same thing. Any access — just landing on the home page— tries to eat 256MB. * Ubuntu 9.04 x64 512MB VPS Cherokee 1.0.5 MySQL 5.3.17 PHP 5.2.10 / Suhosin * phpinfo(): /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini with memory_limit=64MB wp-config.php: define(‘ WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’); * Note that regardless of how low I set memory limits (simultaneously in php.ini and wp-config.php) my server log indicates that wp-admin.php is trying to grab 256M, as described by Helpy earlier in this thread. * Symptoms are intense disk thrashing from a single pageload, leading to failed and partially rendered pages and server timeouts. Unusable. * I tried very hard to follow the directions to install WP3, but maybe I did something wrong. Any ideas about what I should check? * Or is it just a fact of life that WP really needs 256MB to be happy even with no plugins? * Thanks, Carlos * [Carlos Mundi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/carlos-mundi/) * (@carlos-mundi) * [15 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522838) * OK, I think I’ve made some progress. * It now appears that the server logs complaining about an “attacker” trying to allocate 256MB and this being more than the php limit are only _correlated_ with disk thrashing but not actually _causation_. * My VPS recently bumped my RAM from 360MB to 512MB, but I was still running with a 360MB swap. I increased my swap to 512MB and 1. the log messages still appear; but 2. thrashing has stopped. 3. I think this makes sense. Until I had WP going, everythign I had going on probably fit in 360MB of RAM most of teh time. So swapping, when even needed, was probably minimal. But now I have PHP grabbing up to 256MB. With only 360MB of swap, you can imagine the bottleneck. I don’t have enough data to say this was definitely the cause of the thrashing, but the data I do have is consistent with this theory. I will monitor this for a few hours to see. 4. _So, yes, I did do something stupid._ 5. Thanks, Carlos * [carbontwelve](https://wordpress.org/support/users/carbontwelve/) * (@carbontwelve) * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522868) * The way to fix this is open your admin.php file within the wp-admin directory and search for 256M. I believe its on line 96. Change this to the maximum allowed memory limit as declared within your php settings and then save. * The error is kicked up when wordpress attempts to increase the maximum memory limit for php. To be honest 256MB per php process is a HUGE amount of memory, I have happily used wordpress with a limit of 32MB and it has kept on ticking over fine. Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total) The topic ‘admin.php tries to increase memory_limit’ is closed to new replies. ## Tags * [memory_limit](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/memory_limit/) * In: [Alpha/Beta/RC](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/) * 11 replies * 4 participants * Last reply from: [carbontwelve](https://wordpress.org/support/users/carbontwelve/) * Last activity: [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adminphp-tries-to-increase-memory_limit/#post-1522868) * Status: resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics