We recently have seen reports of updates breaking on some of the sites hosted on GoDaddy and a few other hosting providers.
The issue for GoDaddy users appears to be that they use a networked file system that can be extremely slow under load, though usually due to activity from other sites using the same file system. GoDaddy cPanel accounts are similarly limited in file transfer, but these limits are artificially imposed to prevent the site from impacting other accounts.
The update process involves removing old files, unzipping the new plugin, and then copying over the new files to the plugin location. On some hosts, that process can exceed the max_execution time or even the gateway timeout. It’s usually during the last part of the transfer when the new files are copied that issues can occur.
If the file transfer dies when the files are halfway through being copied you can see some very odd effects, but what usually happens is the update fails.
Additionally, if the WAF has been optimized prior to a failed update, this can cause the site to display a 500 error.
We are currently working towards optimizing both the size of the plugin and the number of files it contains, which should speed up both the unzip process and the copying process, as well as the removal process for the next update.
General resource limitations put in place by the hosting company, such as CPU or memory usage limitations, could also be the problem for some hosts, but fewer files in the plugin should help with that as well.
This might not fix every case, since if the file system or other resources are under high usage, updates are likely going to fail no matter what plugin is being updated. Still, we are trying everything we can to ensure updates work, even under circumstances we can’t control.
We are hopeful that, between the current release and the next few updates, the improvements we are working on will address the majority of cases.
