Autoupgrade on a dedicated server

  • Does anyone have any information for server administrators on how to get auto update to work? I have root access on the web server, and I cannot get auto update to work. It gives no error messages, and I have no idea why it is failing.

    Downloading update from https://www.ads-software.com/wordpress-2.8.4.zip

    Unpacking the core update

    Here the script fails with no error messages, no logs, and no clue as to what went wrong.

    First, the files are all owned by myuser:myuser, but ftp for that user goes to /home/myuser/ not /var/www/html/

    So, I added a new user wp-user. Then, I set his home directory to /var/www/html/ Next, I made him a member of the :myuser group/ so he has write permissions to the files. Last, I gave +r permissions to all files in /var/www/html for the group myuser.

    Then I noticed wordpress uploads the zip file to /var/www/html/wp-content as apache:apache with permissions -rw-r—- so I changed the umask on apache to 002 so WordPress.zip is now -rw-rw—. However, the update still breaks at the same point.

    Next I tried chown -R myuser:apache /var/www/html. Still the update fails at: Unpacking the core update

    Does any one have any links that cover how to configure a server to handle WordPress Auto update? Are there any logs created? Any guesses as to what the next step is or what I can do to troubleshoot this?

    Auto upgrades are extermely important with the Rash of worms.

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  • Thread Starter Change

    (@rylar22)

    I read that WordPress is not supposed to ask me for FTP information. So, I typed chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/, and it still fails to update at the same point. However, I no longer have to provide FTP information!

    I did chown apache:apache /var/www/html on another development server I own and that fixed the auto updates on that server. But, the production server still fails at the unpacking step. So, any clues as to why unpacking might fail? It would be nice if this feature had better error checking and better error messages.

    Thread Starter Change

    (@rylar22)

    The final problem was the autoupdate plugin was installed on the blog, and it was conflicting with the build in auto update. It’s a shame there is no check for the plugin. It should have simply thrown an error message instead of failing so mysterously.

    Long story short: To set up wordpress auto updates on your own dedicated server:

    1. chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html or (chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html)
    2. If you receive an unpacking error, disable any and all plugins and try again.

    If WordPress asks you for FTP information, it has failed a permissions test and should State that clearly. It however, misleads users by asking for ftp information. If you get the FTP login screen, check permissions and try again until it updates without asking for a login.

    Hopefully this feature will become more user friendly in future versions.

    Would the following achieve the same:

    chown nobody wp-content

    Thanks

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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