Comments on: Tutorial: What To Do When WordPress Auto-Update Fails

By: kranthi

kranthi — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 05:45:58 +0000

same problem for me too what did you do atlast to rectify?

By: Manos The GreeK

Manos The GreeK — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:12:30 +0000

Well thanks john , there is a big “if” in all this

Well i was trying to update wordpress from version 3.0.1 to 3.2.1 by your way (deleting the upgrade folder ) and then going to the administration of wordpress and trying to do the autoinstall , i had no success and i was stacked with message unpacking the upgrade , after 5-6 tries , i noticed at wp-content folder except the upgrade folder some files with the same name as the folder of the upgrade .tmp, .tmp3, tmp30 , tmp31 tmp32 tmp33 etc (i think the 31 ,32 ,33 is the times i tried to download install the upgrade) so before i did anythink i take a Database backup and a filesysystem backup , after this i delete the .tmp files an the upgrade folder

After that everythink worked nice and now i am at VERSION 3.2.1

By: ravindra rajput

ravindra rajput — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:54:56 +0000

Hi ,
I had successfully updated few plugins then I went ahead to update wordpress but it was unsuccessful.

But then when I tried logging into my wp-admin dashboard I am getting this error

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 262144 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 376984 bytes) in /home/ravsworl/public_html/wp-admin/index.php on line 13

My website is http://ravsworld.com

I tried all these steps:
1) Increased memory limit in wp-config file
2) Renamed all the plugins folder using FTP connection

Still I am unable to solve this issue.

Please help me resolve this issue as neither me nor my webhosting provider has recent backup to do rollover.

Thanks & regards,
Ravindra

By: Gary

Gary — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:32:52 +0000

Just wanted to say thanks for this post and a big thanks to all the suggestions in the comments as well – I was able to get my auto updating working again.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 23 May 2011 11:40:43 +0000

Thank you very much for this post, your solution still worked for me two years on! :-) Much appreciated!

By: Eric Graudins

Eric Graudins — Wed, 04 May 2011 00:52:27 +0000

I was having this problem too, and tried many of the solutions discussed above.
However, the final cause of the problem appeared to be the FTP transfer method used on the server..
If you are experiencing this problem, your host is probably using proftpd instead of pureftp as an FTP transfer method.
If so, ask them to change the FTP transfer method to pureftp. (It’s a simple one click process).
Since this change was made on my server, I have had no problem with updating WordPress, plugins, or themes on any of the accounts on the server.
cheers, Eric G.

By: Web Design Leicester

Web Design Leicester — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 21:31:34 +0000

If this doesn’t solve the problem, another thing to consider checking is the account’s disk quota. If all available space is used up or close to being used up, WordPress won’t be able to create and/or copy files when doing the upgrade.

By: Roberto

Roberto — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:59:41 +0000

I have tried updating my WP site from 3.0.4 to 3.1.1 and removing the upgrade folder did not solve it.
I have tryed to disable the plugins but it always say:
“Could not copy file.: /home/mhd-01/www.surflab.it/htdocs/wp-
content/upgrade/wordpress-34.tmp/wordpress/wp-admin/includes/menu.php

Installation Failed”

By: Michael Mann

Michael Mann — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:29:15 +0000

I just tried updating my one WP site from 3.0.4 to 3.1.1 and removing the upgrade folder did not solve it. Thankfully I remembered having to disable the plugins on another site. That did it for me.

By: WordPress Auto-Update Fails via FTP « Firelight

WordPress Auto-Update Fails via FTP « Firelight — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 21:02:52 +0000

[...] the max execution time, all things you’re not supposed to do. Some blog posts offered more reasonable solutions, like removing the “/wp-content/”upgrade folder. I finally stumbled across one that [...]

By: Kathy Pop

Kathy Pop — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 18:29:31 +0000

I tried it, and it did not work for me either. It seems to be trying to create a tmp file before a directory I get a path like the following
wp-content/upgrade/all-in-one-seo-pack.tmp/all-in-one-seo-pack

I assume that it’s in the DB somewhere, since I manually upgraded WP and replaced all of the files. Any ideas?

By: Shaiq Uddin

Shaiq Uddin — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 21:01:23 +0000

I am trying to auto-update my blog to WP 3.1 but this always shows me an error:-

Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.1.zip…
Download failed.: Could not open handle for fopen() to http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.1.zip
Installation Failed

I’ve tried to delete the ‘upgrade’ directory and I’ve also tried to change ‘wp-content’ directory to 755. But nothing is of my use!

Please Help Me…

By: Emin

Emin — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 08:06:31 +0000

I was using WordPress 3.0.1 or something when I got problems with Auto Update. Actually it worked well installing me all the updates either plugins or WP itself. In the Admin pages I could see the new version number in the footer. But the other day it’s back to the older version and tells me to update again. The upgrade folder in wp-content was still there but it was empty. I deleted it and then made the auto update. Now it worked but sometimes it tells me that there is a new WordPress version and to make an update. Going to the update page it disappears.

WordPress really has to make a few changes to the auto update feature.

By: Paul Söderholm

Paul Söderholm — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:06:01 +0000

I wish I had read this post like last week, would have saved me hours if not days! I fiddled with permissions and deleted the content inside the upgrade directory – it never occurred to me to delete the upgrade directory as well. Problems usually have really simple solutions – you just have to know them :-)
Thanks for the tip, work like a charm!

By: Ed Hammond

Ed Hammond — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:27:22 +0000

I had to give ownership and read/write security to the entire wordpress folder for the account that IIS was running as.
example ISS Account: IUSR_HOSTNAME
Under your local users group this will be the account that starts with IUSR_

By: Hobbsy

Hobbsy — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:14:00 +0000

Thanks for this John – your solution worked for me when upgrading to WordPress 3.0.4 (after numerous fails)

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:39:57 +0000

it did work for me.. thanks John for the article

By: Jess--

Jess-- — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 12:01:24 +0000

Another cause of the update failing is a timeout occurring on the server
I recently had this happening.
it would download the update quite happily and then seem to freeze during extracting the files (checking the upgrade folder showed that it had never fully extracted the archive)
increasing the timeout period fixed the problem
in this case the system is a fairly heavily loaded IIS server

By: colorg

colorg — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 08:02:59 +0000

I have tried just about every option and I am still getting Could not copy file.: /public_html/MyPlayground/wp-admin/css/theme-editor.dev.css error.

John,
I am still pretty new to wordpress could you elaborate on “download the plugin manually”? I know how to manually, but what plugin are you referring too, and where can I get it?

By: Frank A.

Frank A. — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 21:57:33 +0000

Had the same problem. WordPress wasn’t able to auto update to Version 3.0.4 nor to update any plugin. After checking chmod write permissions and deleting the wp-content/upgrade folder over and over again I decided to deactivate all plugins. (: Works fine for me. Thx anyway.