No Update Required Your WordPress database is already up-to-date!

You hit the nail on the head with W3TC as the culprit.

Advice for all WP site owners considering a 3.4.x upgrade:

DISABLE your plugins or at least W3TC at a minimum before considering upgrading your WordPress site files to 3.4.x using the auto update tool.

This is seriously messed up. Not what I needed this morning.
Somebody PLEASE post a resolution to this ASAP, or patch this and put up 3.4.2 to unscrew this up before more people get locked out.

I updated 14 sites to 3.4.1 without the slightest problem. Your issues are site specific and probably very different. Please post your own topics

says you esmi.
Whatever 14 sites you updated obviously don’t contain whatever plugin conflicts 3.4.1 has. There is no reason why anyone should have to worry about doing a routine update like this. I auto-updated to 3.4 without a problem, and every update before that.
Somebody obviously missed something in the logic of update.php or update-core.php (which I’m trying to hack to get around this) that has a conflict. No doubt, before the day is out, you’re going to have more people screaming about this. Best someone who know’s what they are talking about identify this before people fall into this hole.

This is due to W3TC and the core developers not working closely together, or having a disconnect prior to release. You must remove your W3TC files (not simply just the plugin folder, you have to delete the cache content as well, as you will see errors on your main page. Then you must snag a fresh functions.php from the 3.4.1 release and drop it back in via FTP.

This is about a bad a release as Visual Studio SP1 hahah… I guess nobody at core got the memo that a million people use w3tc

oops

This moderator should honestly provide better feedback than “yeah you’re a cry baby mine works fine” –

Am I allowed to trash moderators or recommend their downgrade @ esmi?

I skipped the 3.4 upgrade and then did two major ones to 3.41 last night and both completed in under two minutes on GoDaddy’s servers. The WordPress team cannot be blamed for not consulting every plugin and theme developer to see whether they had been closely following good development practices. There are PHP, browser and server specific issues and so I think esmi and others who have been providing help are doing a good job.

This is due to W3TC and the core developers not working closely together

You are kidding, yes? Do you seriously expect the core devs to consult all 20,000 authors of plugins on https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/ ? And what about the tens of thousands of plugins hosted elsewhere?

Oh – be realistic!

Blame is irrelevant.
An issue that affects a ton of people has been identified that locks people out of their admins.
Luckily for me, somehow, I refreshed and I was in my admin and I was able to deactivate W3TC which I’m not that vested in (yet)
Is it fixed, I don’t know? I’m going to wait for an explanation.

Especially because this has to do with caching and performance, a simple conditional flag forced a redirect with no way out other than hacking, this should be identified and fixed. full stop.

Half this thread has been unproductive due a peeing contest between a moderator and members. Let’s focus on a resolution.

Agreed. Please post your own topics.