I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve experienced many instances where the Auto-update feature in WordPress fails to update either a plugin or WordPress itself.
The solution to this problem is remarkably simple, and hopefully will be fixed soon by the WP core developers in an upcoming release. The problem seems to be caused by a messy previous upgrade in which files are left in a temporary “upgrade” directory with the wp-content directory.
In order to solve the problem, you simply need to delete the “upgrade” directory in it’s entirety and then try the upgrade again. I’ve yet to find an instance on several blogs across multiple machines where this didn’t solve the problem.
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Oh this is really cool, I really did not know it would be that simple. However hopefully it wont cause any problems or issues like loss of any data or file.
Unfortunately, this didn’t work for me. I still got a “could not copy files” error when attempting the upgrade.
Jeff,
That sounds like it could be a permissions issue. Which is really hard to diagnose in the comments of a blog post. But you might try changing the permissions on your wp-content folder to 755 if they are not already like that.
John P.
Hello John, I have been finding not only wordpress update failing on me on a regular basis but also larger plugins like All In One SEO. I am not sure why do you have any ideas. At first i thought it was bad net connection or time of day that I am trying to do the updates, but I am really not sure if that is the case. Your guru incite would be greatly appreciated. jon
I don’t know what to tell you Jonalyn. I’ve seen the failure to update randomly with a number of plugins, both big and small, as well as with WordPress itself. It seems entirely random to me, and the main issue seems to simply be WordPress’ auto-update feature not cleaning up after itself by deleting the previous upgrade files.
I think the proof of this comes in the fact that you can manually remove them and try the upgrade again and it works every time. So, I wouldn’t worry too much about root cause diagnosis. We just need to wait till the developers get the process ironed out and in the meantime you now know the fix.
Cheers,
John P.
Very cool,,, this worked for me. My main blog got hacked a few weeks ago while I was traveling, so now I am playing catch up trying to get my post back, upgrade plugins etc. Thank you for you solution to this upgrading issue. lew
ok this article really rocks in fact this is something amazing because something that it seems all this year for me really difficult now is just simple as taking a candy to a baby I really fell like an idiot because all this time with problems when wordPress auto-update fails and now I realize that is so easey…
Many times i’ve experienced problems to that auto update because of the file permissions. But before playing around with those, get rid off that “upgrade” folder. It could save you a lot of time messing with the WP installation.
Perfect! It worked, thanks John! On a side note, some of my plugins caused the issue to happen again (not all) and even when doing the fix the upgrade did not happen as it was supposed to. I believe this is a plugin issue, but I could be wrong. For those ones I had to manually upgrade them. The two specific plugins I had issues with were “Subscribe2″ and “Lifestream”.
Thanks again!
Aaahh…Thanks.. I was updating flickr plugin when it failed…and as usual I search the internet and there was your blog..Thanks..the fix works great…
It didn’t work for me… :(
I have all permisions OK (777) and the update process works fine until last step…
Take a look…
“Downloading update from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/PLUGIN_NAME.
Unpacking the update.
Installing the latest version.
Removing the old version of the plugin.
Could not create directory. /usr/home/BLOG_NAME.com/web/wp-content/plugins/PLUGIN_NAME/
Plugin upgrade Failed.”
My Blog works with WP 2.8.3 and these plugins (5) works fine in another blog i manage (but in other host).
Current hosting works with PHP5 (5.1.6_3)… maybe plugin updates crashes because of this…
Please help!!! thanks in advance! :-)
That is strange Dave. Especially with permissions set so liberally. So, out of curiosity, did you try and manually install that plugin via FTP? I believe I would try that next and see if it still causes problems. It might lead to more information for troubleshooting purposes.
John
Hi John, thanks for your answer :-)
Yes, i’ve installed the plugins via FTP successfully but i want to enjoy automatic updates… that will make my work easier.
I fear this will cause me trouble when i’ll have to upgrade wordpress to a future new version (2.8.4 or high). It could be a hell!
Wow, thanks alot for this; it worked like a charm! Nice Search Engine placement too; found this on the first page of Google’s Search.
[...] spent quite some time googling before I found the answer over at One Man’s Blog. It was really simple too. Just delete the upgrade folder under [...]
Thank you! I have been changing EVERYTHING – owners, permissions, you name it. This was too simple!
Thanks! Worked perfectly. I am so glad I found your site! Apparently, I need to delete the upgrade folder after each auto update. Maybe WordPress will fix this in the future.
Please John help me. I work with 10 wp sites and only 1 is giving me this problem. I didn’t solve by simply deleting the upgrade folder. Any other suggestion?
Thank you
Hi John,
I have the same problem that Dave. I cannot upgrade my plugins but yes wordpress core.
Same message. “could not create directory /usr/home/cucharadas.com/web/wp-content/plugins/theplugin/”
files/directories permisions???? core yes, plugins no…
Thanks in advance
It did not work for me. I am facing this problem with my host. But with a different host automatic upgrade always works fine. Very badly needed this as it will save lots of time.
Nope. No luck. I don’t get any kind of error when trying to update. It simply hangs on the ‘unpacking files’ portion of the procedure. Nothing else ever happens after that. The same thing happens when I try to install new themes.
Dude you just saved my life… I did backup my entire site before trying to upgrade in case the upgrade was going to fail (because it has before on me without a backup!)… But i didn’t realize it was going to be so easy to repair it!
I got the whole “Down for scheduled maintenance error” and thought I was going to have to FTP my backup which would take like 30 minutes at least!…. But your solution fixed it in less than 30 seconds. Thanks! Your site was really easy to find too, first search result.
Glad I was able to save you some frustration there Boon! ;-)
John P.
Tnx for your tip. Didn’t work for me (although the upgrade dir was there).
What helped me (2.9 -> 2.9.2 DE version hosted on 1+1) was adding
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
to the htaccess.
Cheers
JD
This didn’t work for me. My auto update hangs at
Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.9.2.zip
every time and always has. I’ve tried every fix I can find. =/