Automatic plugin updates not working with XAMPP on OSX (needs FTP login)

You’d need to change the permissions on the plugins directory for WordPress to have more control over it.

I personally use this WordPress SSH upgrade and install tutorial to upgrade my plugins. It might work since you’re on OS X, so you could give it a shot.

The alternative is to input similar values into the wp-config and you won’t have to manually enter them each time.

Jdingman what do you mean specifically by “The alternative is to input similar values into the wp-config and you won’t have to manually enter them each time.”

What hard code these details in that file? Could you possibly show me please.

As I’m on Snow Leopard using MAMP PRO I have started Mac OS X FTP server and I’m using the ipaddress it gave me in the wordpress ftp host: field as well as the username and password I have. But it just gives me this error all the time: Failed to connect to FTP Server propono:21. Can anyone shed some light on this for me, as I would like to upgrade my plugins on my local machine automatically.

Thank you.

I am having the same problem – Has anyone figured out how to upgrade WP and WP Plugin’s locally using the built in WP FTP.

I am on Mac OSX Snow Leopard with MAMP Pro.

I can setup a local FTP server (which works nicely on FileZilla) but can’t seem to get WP to play ball!

Thanks – Jack

I’ve found, with each release, that automatic updates don’t work on Mac OS X out of the box. However I’ve fixed the problem for my installations – I haven’t submitted a bug fix because I don’t know that it would work on a non-Mac OS X installation.

The fix is as follows:

First, make sure that you have enabled the PHP ‘sockets’ extension. It won’t work without it. Try running

php --ri sockets

and confirm that sockets support is enabled.

Second, you need to edit one of the distribution files.
The file you need to change is wp-admin/includes/class-ftp.php.
Search for the three calls to rawlist() (there is one in dirlist(), one in mdel() and one in mget()). Remove the ‘-la‘ and ‘-lA‘ options from between the quotes (i.e. leave an empty string).

After that you should find that it all works now.

It seems that sending those options to the Mac OS X ftp server confuses it…

Hope this helps some of you, if not all…

cheers
Chris

I was just running up against the same problem – trying to update WordPress plugins on WordPress 3.0 on XAMPP server installed locally and could not get past the ftp hostname, username, password combination.

Thankfully I came across this post – http://www.messaliberty.com/2010/04/how-to-fix-wordpress-automatic-upgrades-and-plugin-installs-on-xampp/ – and its now working fine for me (not requesting the ftp details). Had to muck around a bit with the file permissions on the file you have to change in XAMPP, but got there eventually.

Hey, susie54… thanks for the link! I’m using a MAMP set-up using one of the Lynda.com tut’s… hand coding it in rather than using an all-in-one. Do you know if I can follow the steps in that link the same way without a XAMPP? (Sorry, I’m a total non-coder!) Thanks for the input. 😀

Hi AlexLakes, thanks for offering the help. I agree about not having to worry about ftp. My MAMP is up and running, no worries there… My problem is related to the original post in this string and having trouble installing and updating WP plugins. xps’s post a few above came the closest to helping fix my problem (I think) but I am NOT good at going into the Terminal and I need some step by step instructions (type this… then this…) of how to change the file he said to change.

Alex, you are SO NICE for offering this help and sticking with me on this. 🙂 THANK YOU!!! One more question… I found the file, found the instances, but not sure exactly how much of the code to remove. So here’s the first instance:

function mget($remote, $local=".", $continious=false) {
		$list=$this->rawlist($remote, "-lA");
		if($list===false) {
			$this->PushError("mget","can't read remote folder list", "Can't read remote folder \"".$remote."\" contents");
			return FALSE;
		}

Do I just delete the -1A and leave the quotes w/nothing between them or do I delete the entire line? Sorry to be so dense… I’m learning all of this from scratch. 😛