Unable to update local installation

  • Resolved norricorp

    (@norricorp)


    3 years ago

    I have installed 5.8.1 on a linux VM. I copied the files to /var/www/html and set the owner/group to a local user with g+w permissions. Apache is listening on port 80 and I have not made changes to ports.conf. And wordpress works.
    I have seen a few articles on changing to a different port which wordked for apache but not for wordpress but that is OK. I can use a browser either on the localhost or a different machine.

    Where I am having real problems is updating or installing new themes. I have installed the ftpserver. I complete the dialog with localhost, local username and password. I get the following

    Downloading update from https://downloads.www.ads-software.com/release/wordpress-5.8.2-partial-1.zip…
The authenticity of wordpress-5.8.2-partial-1.zip could not be verified as no signature was found.
Unpacking the update…
Warning: ftp_mkdir(): Permission denied. in /var/www/html/wp-admin/includes/class-wp-filesystem-ftpext.php on line 560
Warning: ftp_rmdir(): Permission denied. in /var/www/html/wp-admin/includes/class-wp-filesystem-ftpext.php on line 408
Could not create directory.
Installation failed.

    I have set the html directory to 777 recursively and same problem. Which folder is it trying to create? I had also set the installation permissions for group to www-data prior to this. Same result.

    What am I doing wrong? BTW, I am new to wordpress ….

    • This topic was modified 3 years ago by norricorp.
Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    The issue isn’t within WordPress itself, it’s that the user PHP runs as cannot create directories where it needs to. New themes need to make a new directory for its files in /wp-content/themes/

    This user varies by installation. It’s defined in Apache’s configuration file. This user should own all WP directories, or at least have read/write access. Setting up a server can be tricky business. This is why many people use a full stack package like Local by Flywheel.

    Thread Starter norricorp

    (@norricorp)

    Thank you for replying to this.
    I certainly agree that setting up a server for wordpress is a tricky business. What I do not understand is why the ftp process (or any process) should not be able to write to the wordpress folder when it is set to 777.
    Any ideas?
    Regards,

    Dion

    (@diondesigns)

    You can install PHP-FPM and configure it to run as your local user, then reset permissions back to 0755/0644. Instructions for installing and configuring PHP-FPM for your Linux distro can be found on StackExchange.

    If this is truly a localhost setup (no outside world access), then there is an alternate (and simpler) solution. First, make sure Apache is only listening to 127.0.0.1, and then change the Apache user/group to your local user. Both Apache and PHP will now run as that user, and file/directory permissions can be reset back to 0755/0644.

    Henry Wright

    (@henrywright)

    This isn’t the cause of the issue but why is -partial-1 in the wordpress-5.8.2-partial-1.zip file name for the download?

    Thread Starter norricorp

    (@norricorp)

    Hi @henrywright – good question. No idea. File is downloaded by wordpress.
    I should close this. I moved to Local by Flywheel as suggested earlier. And that works really well.

    Henry Wright

    (@henrywright)

    Yes, the origin is downloads.www.ads-software.com so the file will be authentic. It would be good to know how wordpress-5.8.2-partial-1.zip is different to wordpress-5.8.2.zip though

    Glad you got this working using Flywheel

    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    Generally speaking, the partial-1 name appears when the download is in progress. Once complete that part of the file name is removed. If such a filename is still evident after “completion”, the download was interrupted and should be re-tried.

    However, in the case of updates from the WP backend, the entire file is removed after .zip extraction, so there should be no .zip file remaining (except for a short time in a temp folder). In any case extraction will fail if the downloaded .zip file is incomplete. The nature of .zip decompression process requires a complete file.

    Also, there actually is no automatic MD5 signature check performed, hence the signature verification failure message. If you really feel the need to validate a download this way, it’d have to be done manually.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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