[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #44458: Catch WSODs and provide a means for recovery for end users

[WordPress Trac]

#44458: Catch WSODs and provide a means for recovery for end users
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 Reporter:  schlessera      |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  task (blessed)  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:  5.0
Component:  Bootstrap/Load  |     Version:
 Severity:  normal          |  Resolution:
 Keywords:                  |     Focuses:
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Comment (by schlessera):

 ''(copied from Slack for future reference)''

 I've started looking into this briefly, and here's what I've found out so
 far:
 - Exceptions don't help, as they are not fully integrated into the error
 handling at PHP 5.2.
 - We can use a shutdown handler to detect fatal errors and know where they
 were triggered: https://3v4l.org/4jWAs .
 - Such a shutdown handler could record a fatal error, and the next page
 request could then detect a recorded fatal error and decide based on some
 heuristics whether to initiate "safe mode". (edited)

 There's an obvious security-related issue here:
 This "safe mode" will skip loading plugins & themes, so it will also skip
 any security-related enhancements that were done to the site. An attacker
 might forcefully trigger the "safe mode" to get past security mechanisms.

 Some other assumptions I'm making right now:
 - We cannot just act on plugin activation/deactivation, as this will still
 take the site down if we update PHP.
 - We cannot disable a single plugin, as we cannot reliably detect who the
 actual culprit is in all cases.
 - We might be able to disable a single plugin in those cases where we hit
 a parse error in a file of a plugin.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/44458#comment:2>
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