Update to 4.0 issue – inconsistent file permissions

I’m sure it is referring to some other files than the update-core.php It is probably folder or file permissions of some files that are affected by the update. I would try temporarily setting some wide open permissions, and then locking it back down after the update. What permissions do you have set for wp-content? If you set the other files and folders temporarily to those same permissions I think it will work fine.

My Wp-contetn directory is already set at 777

brad@ubuntu:/var/www/wordpress$ ls -l
total 180
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root   418 Sep 24  2013 index.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root 19930 Apr  9 18:50 license.txt
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root  7194 Aug  6 13:27 readme.html
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root  4896 Dec 24  2013 wp-activate.php
drwxrwxr-x  9 root root  4096 Aug  6 13:41 wp-admin
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root   271 Jan  8  2012 wp-blog-header.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root  4818 Feb 18  2014 wp-comments-post.php
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  3191 Aug 27 22:34 wp-config.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root  3087 Oct 24  2013 wp-config-sample.php
drwxrwxrwx  8 root root  4096 Aug 27 22:35 wp-content
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root  2932 Sep 24  2013 wp-cron.php
drwxrwxr-x 12 root root  4096 Aug  6 13:41 wp-includes
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root  2380 Oct 24  2013 wp-links-opml.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root  2359 Oct 24  2013 wp-load.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root 33407 Aug  6 01:37 wp-login.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root  8235 Nov 13  2013 wp-mail.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root 11070 Apr  7 15:15 wp-settings.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root 25665 Nov 12  2013 wp-signup.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root  4026 Oct 24  2013 wp-trackback.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 root root  3032 Feb  9  2014 xmlrpc.php
brad@ubuntu:/var/www/wordpress$ cd wp-content
brad@ubuntu:/var/www/wordpress/wp-content$ ls -l
total 32
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data 1100 Aug 27 22:34 advanced-cache.php
drwxr-xr-x  6 www-data www-data 4096 Aug 27 22:36 cache
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root     root       28 Jan  8  2012 index.php
drwxrwxrwx 16 root     root     4096 Sep  9 16:39 plugins
drwxrwxrwx  6 root     root     4096 Sep  9 15:24 themes
drwxrwxrwx  2 www-data www-data 4096 Sep  9 16:39 upgrade
drwxrwxrwx  4 www-data www-data 4096 Sep  9 16:39 uploads
drwxr-xr-x  2 www-data www-data 4096 Sep  9 16:39 w3tc-config

Yes, my point is that WP can obviously modify the wp-content directory, or it would be unusable. So, there must be other directories and files that it is trying to modify during the upgrade. These files and directories are probably not set to 777, which may be what your server setup requires in order to let WP modify anything. Temporarily set the permissions, on all files and folders, and afterward raise them back.

Lower your shields, so you can beam up the away team. ??

Thanks for the help. That worked. I just changed all of it to 777

brad@ubuntu:/var/www$ sudo chmod 777 -R wordpress/

Sweet, that’s good to know! I would switch it back just for safety’s sake.

change the owner and group from root to www-data

chown -hR www-data:www-data wordpress/

I’m getting an error when trying to change the owner using that command. It’s telling me the “h” is an invalid option.

chmod: invalid option — ‘h’
Try

chmod –help’ for more information.
brad@ubuntu:/var/www$ sudo chmod –help
Usage: chmod [OPTION]… MODE[,MODE]… FILE…
or: chmod [OPTION]… OCTAL-MODE FILE…
or: chmod [OPTION]… –reference=RFILE FILE…
Change the mode of each FILE to MODE.

-c, –changes like verbose but report only when a change is made
–no-preserve-root do not treat `/’ specially (the default)
–preserve-root fail to operate recursively on `/’
-f, –silent, –quiet suppress most error messages
-v, –verbose output a diagnostic for every file processed
–reference=RFILE use RFILE’s mode instead of MODE values
-R, –recursive change files and directories recursively
–help display this help and exit
–version output version information and exit`

Sorry, look for the equivalent command for your linux OS