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.

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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]

This should help ensure that there isn't a false positive of there being another sibling directory name with the same common prefix.

Suggested change

	$absolute_path = realpath( ABSPATH );
	$absolute_path = realpath( ABSPATH ) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;

[hbhalodia]

Updated, Thanks.

[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.

[westonruter]

Suggested change

	$result['label'] = __( 'Your site is set to log errors to a file outside the public directory' );
	$result['label'] = __( 'Your site is set to log errors to a file outside the document root' );

[westonruter]

Suggested change

	__( 'The value, %s, has been configured to write errors to a file outside the WordPress directory. This is a good practice as the log file is not publicly accessible.' ),
	__( 'The configuration constant, %s, has been set to write errors to a file outside the WordPress directory. This is a good practice as the log file should not be publicly accessible.' ),

[westonruter]

Suggested change

	__( 'The value, %s, has been added to this website’s configuration file. This means any errors on the site will be written to a file which is potentially available to all users.' ),
	__( 'The constant, %s, has been added to this website’s configuration file. This means any errors on the site will be written to a file which is likely publicly accessible.' ),

[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.