Automatic Wordpress updates usually fail. Anyone found a solution?

[spaceman]

Hi All,

I'm playing around with Wordpress, a copy that originally manually self-installed, as opposed to using Fantastico or similar to do the base install for me.

Whenever updates/patches are issued for either Wordpress itself, and/or plugins I've installed, I'll always attempt the automatic update feature. Problem is that, especially with regard to core Wordpress updates, the automatic (web-based) update option almost always fails. If memory serves, the brief reasons given are that Wordpress couldn't create some folder or another, i.e. a permissions issue. But even though I attempt to fix the permissions issue on the file and/or folders in questions, these problems come around again and again, i.e. I don't seem to be able to arrive at a permanent permissions fix. The fallback (which always works) is to use an ftp client to manually perform the update. So it works in the end, but this method is relatively slow and messy.

Is anyone else having this issue? Perhaps my mistake was that I didn't let Fantastic do all the grunt work for me in the first place to install Wordress? Or perhaps the issue is unresolvable because suphp is NOT running on the hosting server, so the default user if 'nobody', whereas perhaps Wordpress needs files/folders to be owned by an individual account users for auto updates to run smoothly?

Any insights would be appreciated. Thx.

[Infopro]

Or perhaps the issue is unresolvable because suphp is NOT running on the hosting server, so the default user if 'nobody', whereas perhaps Wordpress needs files/folders to be owned by an individual account users for auto updates to run smoothly?

I would agree with this assessment.

[uninvited13th]

If your server is fast then it would not fail

[lastguru]

I noticed that updates from autoinstaller scripts (like softaculous) are generally more reliable...

[garrettp]

If your server is fast then it would not fail

I noticed that updates from autoinstaller scripts (like softaculous) are generally more reliable...

These statements, quite frankly, are false. If permissions are not set properly for your PHP environment, the auto-update functionality for Wordpress will always fail. I don't recommend using the auto-updater with the DSO loader because youll need to throw 777 permissions on just about everything (bad idea).

The simple solution is to run SuPHP. Ensure 755 for directories and 644 for files as well as proper cPanel user ownership (as opposed to nobody), and you'll be able to user the auto-updater no problem.

[JoshDylan]

Garrett said it best. Simply use SuPHP and you will not have this issue. Simple solution for this issue. If your a cpanel customer from a hosting company, I suggest making a ticket requesting that they enable SuPHP for their services.