Automatic Background Updates Unreliable, Difficult to Debug

  • Resolved gohanman

    (@gohanman)


    11 years, 5 months ago

    I have two separate sites that did not automatically update from 4.0.0 to 4.0.1. In both cases I can’t tell why.

    Updating manually works fine. Additionally, the update-core.php pages does *not* say anything about future updates so presumably a configuration problem somewhere.

    I’ve tried:

    • Searching the entire wordpress directory for instances of AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED. It is not defined anywhere and only occurs in class-wp-upgrader.php
    • Searching the entire wordpress directory for instances of WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE. It is not defined anywhere and only occurs in class-wp-upgrader.php
    • Searching the entire wordpress directory for instances of automatic_updater_disabled. There are no add_filter calls anywhere and only occurs in class-wp-upgrader.php
    • Searching the entire wordpress directory for instances of auto_update_core. This one simply does not occur anywhere.

    Grepping for magic constants is really not an ideal way to manage configuration. A better UI for this would be really helpful.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Tim Nash

    (@tnash)

    Spam hunter

    11 years, 5 months ago

    The constants should only appear if you put them there, one of the reasons for no UI is it should be very rare that a user does not want automatic updates to occur, though their are times, such as when a site is maintained in version control, where its not desirable.

    In such cases the constant should be included in wp-config.php

    Automatic Updating failing is rare, but when happens it’s normally something at the server or host level.

    Couple of quick diagnosis questions

    • You have setup FTP/SFTP details and if you update a plugin via the admin interface this happens without issue?
    • You received a visual prompt suggesting updating?
    • There is nothing in your error logs to indicate an issue, these can often be got from your cpanel, or var/log occasionally they are also available by FTP
    Thread Starter gohanman

    (@gohanman)

    11 years, 5 months ago

    Version control! I never had WordPress itself under VC, but there was an old .svn folder farther up the directory tree (an artifact of hosting multiple domains under the same root directory). It took a bit of digging through the code to figure out what paths it was checking for version control.

    From what I saw tracing through this, it looks to me like automatic background updates won’t run under any of the following conditions:
    a) both cURL and streams are unavailable
    b) cURL and/or streams do not have SSL support
    c) WordPress appears to be under version control

    IMO it would be helpful to note somewhere which of these checks is failing. I realize this isn’t useful information to all users and showing it prominently would confuse more than it helps, but having the details available somewhere would have been quicker than familiarizing myself with WP’s HTTP abstractions to figure out what was happening.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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