Title: Firewall cannot run
Last modified: July 17, 2021

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# Firewall cannot run

 *  Resolved [hypevent](https://wordpress.org/support/users/hypevent/)
 * (@hypevent)
 * [4 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/firewall-cannot-run-2/)
 * The Wordfence Web Application Firewall cannot run. The configuration files are
   corrupt or inaccessible by the web server, which is preventing the WAF from functioning.
   Please verify the web server has permission to access the configuration files.
   You may also try to rebuild the configuration file by clicking here. It will 
   automatically resume normal operation when it is fixed.
 * We were unable to write to ~/wp-content/wflogs/ which the WAF uses for storage.
   Please update permissions on the parent directory so the web server can write
   to it.
 * wflogs has a permission of 0644
 * The page I need help with: _[[log in](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.org%2Fsupport%2Ftopic%2Ffirewall-cannot-run-2%2F%3Foutput_format%3Dmd&locale=en_US)
   to see the link]_

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Plugin Support [wfpeter](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wfpeter/)
 * (@wfpeter)
 * [4 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/firewall-cannot-run-2/#post-14676902)
 * Hi [@hypevent](https://wordpress.org/support/users/hypevent/), thanks for reaching
   out to us.
 * It’s normally worth having permissions on your WordPress site’s directories set
   to `755` and that the owner on your WordPress root directory (and all contained
   directories) is `www-data`. Web servers such as Apache, Nginx, etc will require
   www-data to be an owner so that WordPress and plugins can update and run functions
   required to do so.
 * If you have persistent problems with this file/folder, you can bypass this entirely
   by setting Wordfence to write to the MySQLi storage engine instead of a file 
   if you prefer: [https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/mysqli-storage-engine/](https://www.wordfence.com/help/firewall/mysqli-storage-engine/)
 * Let me know how you get on!
 * Peter.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘Firewall cannot run’ is closed to new replies.

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 * 1 reply
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [wfpeter](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wfpeter/)
 * Last activity: [4 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/firewall-cannot-run-2/#post-14676902)
 * Status: resolved