# Troubleshooting

> Source: https://www.allsweb.com/sixpreflight/docs/troubleshooting
> Markdown for agents: https://www.allsweb.com/sixpreflight/docs/troubleshooting.md
> Publisher: AllsWeb (www.allsweb.com)

Part of: SixPreflight documentation

Most problems with SixPreflight itself have a specific, mechanical cause — a file permission, a proxy, a mismatched address. Find your symptom below rather than reading the whole page.

## The scan stops partway through with a PHP error

Your host has disabled a PHP function that SixPreflight calls to measure the server, and an older copy of the tool could not survive that.

On PHP 8, calling a disabled function is a fatal error rather than a warning. It cannot be suppressed with `@`, and the scan runner had no error handling around it — so one disabled function ended the whole scan with a stack trace instead of a report, including the ninety-odd checks that had nothing to do with it.

This is fixed. A disabled function is now a single row saying that value could not be measured, and the scan runs to the end.

:::note If you still see this, you are on an older copy
Download SixPreflight again and replace the folder, then set a password and re-run. Your saved scan history and your password hash live inside the old folder, so export any runs you want to keep first — see [Verify and history](https://www.allsweb.com/sixpreflight/docs/verify-and-history).

Worth doing on shared cPanel and Plesk hosting in particular. Those hosts disable the most, and they are where this was found.
:::

## "Set a password first" will not go away

`config.php` is not writable by the web server, so the browser form cannot save a password. Either make the folder writable, or set the password hash by hand as a fallback:

```bash
php -r 'echo password_hash("your-password", PASSWORD_DEFAULT), "\n";'
```

Paste the result into `config.php` as `password_hash`, then reload.

## "Could not create preflight/config.php"

The folder itself is not writable, so the tool cannot even create its own config file from the sample. Make the folder writable, or copy the sample file by hand:

```bash
cp preflight/config.sample.php preflight/config.php
```

## The page 404s

The folder is above your document root. On a correctly configured server the document root is `public/`, so anything placed above it is unreachable by URL. Move the folder into `public/` — do not move your document root up just to reach a folder in the application root instead. See [where the folder goes](https://www.allsweb.com/sixpreflight/docs/install#where-the-folder-goes).

## "Not allowed from this address"

Your IP address is not in the `allow_ips` list in `config.php`. The page prints the address that actually arrived and, if you are behind a proxy, what that proxy claims your real address is — see [Security and privacy](https://www.allsweb.com/sixpreflight/docs/security-and-privacy#restricting-by-ip-address-optional).

## "Could not read .env"

The banner at the top of the page tells you which of two situations you are in. If `artisan` is present in the folder above, `.env` exists but is unreadable by the PHP user — fix the file permission. If `artisan` is not there at all, the folder is not inside a Laravel application — which is expected if you meant to run it in standalone mode, and a sign it is in the wrong place otherwise.

## Exposure tests say "not tested"

The site did not answer a request from itself. Common causes: the `curl` extension is not installed, so nothing was ever sent; the server has only one PHP worker, so the request queues behind the scan's own probe and times out; outbound access to your own domain is blocked by DNS or a firewall rule; or a security tool has banned the server's own address for making requests that look like a scan. Check by hand:

```bash
curl -I https://your-domain.com/.env
```

## A panel or section is empty

Usually a permission problem, not an absence — an unreadable log looks identical to a quiet one from the outside. Open the setup checklist; the list there names every input it could not read and gives the exact command to fix each one.

## A finding looks wrong

Tell us. A green tick that was not earned, or a red flag on a server that is genuinely fine, is the worst thing this tool can do — and the thing it is built most carefully to avoid.

## Removing it

Delete the folder once you are finished with it. It is password-protected and can be IP-restricted, but it reports server internals and has no reason to stay on a live site once your server is chosen and tuned.

```bash
rm -rf /path/to/your/site/public/preflight
```

That removes the saved scan history along with it. If you want to keep a record, export the runs you care about as plain text first — see [Verify and history](https://www.allsweb.com/sixpreflight/docs/verify-and-history).