Plugin Upgrade Failing, Cannot Remove Old Plugin

  • I have searched around on the forums and Google and have been unable to find a solution to my particular issue.

    When trying to automatically upgrade plugins I get the following:

    Downloading update from https://downloads.www.ads-software.com/plugin/stats.1.3.8.zip

    Unpacking the update

    Deactivating the plugin

    Removing the old version of the plugin

    Could not remove the old plugin

    Plugin upgrade Failed

    I have used both my FTP URL and “localhost” as the Hostname for the connection, neither works. Username and password are correct as I can manually upgrade the plugins, which is time-consuming and what I’m hoping to avoid.

    I have chmod the permissions on the wp-content, upgrade and plugins folders to 777 and 775 and every combination therein.

    As you can see, the plugin that is failing is the WP Stats plugin, so I don’t think it’s a plugin issue as it also happens for the other 5 plugins I need to update.

    Anyone?

Viewing 9 replies - 16 through 24 (of 24 total)
  • detroiter

    (@detroiter)

    I’ve narrowed down the problem even more.

    The automatic upgrade will work but only after three tries.

    The first time it usually says could not remove old plugin.

    The second time it says could not activate new plugin.

    The third time it works and gives me the activate plugin link.

    It seems as though it takes an inordinately long time each time I try the auto update, takes around 4 minutes to successfully upgrade since I have to do it 3 times.

    detroiter

    (@detroiter)

    Oh and btw I run two blogs on the same host and this is the same for both of them.

    Nothing.

    Looks like I figured out a solution others may want to try.

    1. Make sure your wp-config.php file is chmodded to 0644.

    2. Also make sure your .htaccess file is protecting the wp-config file using these lines:

    <Files wp-config.php>
    order allow,deny
    deny from all
    </Files>

    3. Backup your wp-config.php file.

    4. Edit your wp-config.php file putting these lines in underneath <?php:

    define(‘FS_METHOD’, ‘ftpsockets’);
    define(‘FTP_BASE’, ‘/path/to/wordpress/’);
    define(‘FTP_CONTENT_DIR’, ‘/path/to/wordpress/wp-content/’);
    define(‘FTP_PLUGIN_DIR ‘, ‘/path/to/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/’);
    define(‘FTP_USER’, ‘username’);
    define(‘FTP_PASS’, ‘password’);
    define(‘FTP_HOST’, ‘ftp.example.org’);

    —

    WordPress no longer asks me for FTP details and it seems that everything is now working as it should be as far as automatic upgrade/install of plugins.

    Make sure you leave the port (:21) off the FTP_HOST line.

    Thanks Detroiter for all your efforts here. I tried your config edits and I still am getting failed upgrades. This is really frustrating!

    This has been a big issue for a long time. Thank you detroiter!!

    Detroiter, I followed your steps and it took care of the problem. Thanks for your help!

    empius

    Make sure that you didn’t reach your site’s quota for disk space. That was my problem. Cleaned up my server space and the problem went away.

    detrioter, thank you for the info. it helped me.

Viewing 9 replies - 16 through 24 (of 24 total)
  • The topic ‘Plugin Upgrade Failing, Cannot Remove Old Plugin’ is closed to new replies.