Upgrading to 4.1 fixed parse error

Question

In the past few days I've had reports that users weren't able to access my site. They were just getting a blank page.

I checked the error_log and found this.

[22-Nov-2014 22:07:41 UTC] PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected end of file in /mysite/wp-includes/post.php on line 235

I was running v4.0 and I force upgraded to v4.0.1 via softaculous, that seems to of fixed the issues. Which is great for now.

My concern is what caused this.

In my site root I found a .maintenance file and I couldn't access the the upgrade folder.

I wonder if it was the site trying to auto update this security update which that failed.

Has anyone else come across this error?

Answer 1

From the error you posted, I suspect that there was some kind of file corruption. The original file /wp-includes/post.php shouldn't end at line 235. The file should have 5841 lines (in WP version 4.0 and 4.0.1). If it was a file corruption and the error doesn't appear anymore, the update probably "healed" the damage by overwriting the file.

Nevertheless I sugest to check your installation, because such a file corruption shouldn't happen except if someone is messing around with the files.