how to uninstall plugins if plugin manager isn’t working

  • beyondelsewhere

    (@beyondelsewhere)


    19 years ago

    out of curiosity… any plugin I installed using the one-click option in wp-plugin manager. however, the plugin-manager is no longer working. in another post I asked about this and someone told me my host must have disabled something (except they tell me they haven’t)

    my problem is this : anything I installed using PM I CANNOT uninstall via anyother method. so I am stuck with these plugins. All I can do is disable them. I generally like to uninstall a plugin before I install the upgrade and since I now have to manually install my plugins via FTP I don’t know what to do about the old versions.

    as long as I have the old version disabled should there be a problem with my installing a newer version manually?(i.e. version 1.9 of Gravatars by skippy). is there a way to uninstall the “one-click” ones via FTP? I just get told I don’t have permission to do that.

    ARGH!
    (and thank you! :))

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • ColdForged

    (@coldforged)

    19 years ago

    Tricky. About the only recourse I can think of — and this is pretty hacky, admittedly — is create a new template and insert some PHP code in that template to chown all the files in your wp-content/plugins directory to your UID. That way you can deal with them again.

    The problem with the WPPM is that, as you’ve found, in some environments the files installed are owned by the UID of the Apache process, not your FTP UID. Hence, the FTP UID doesn’t have permission to due jack to it. So, you have to again rely on the Apache UID under the guise of some PHP code to change the owner of the file back to you.

    Thread Starter beyondelsewhere

    (@beyondelsewhere)

    19 years ago

    gee. I have no idea how to do that. Um… a new template for what? The plugins? my page? wppm?

    would there be a less tech-y way to fix this? you know, for someone like me who hasn’t a clue? 🙂

    ColdForged

    (@coldforged)

    19 years ago

    Unfortunately it’s a techy situation. Let me see what I can come up with.

    ColdForged

    (@coldforged)

    19 years ago

    Alrighty, go here, download that code to a file and upload it to your wp-plugins directory with your FTP client and save it as “chmod-hack.php”. Activate it in the Plugins menu.

    Using your FTP client you should be able to delete those plugin files now… the plugin changed the permissions of all files in the plugins directory to 777. Bear in mind, that’s unsafe. So, click on the Plugins menu again. Every time you click on the Plugins menu while that plugin is active it will toggle the permissions of all the files in the wp-content/plugins directory between 0777 and 0755. So, when you’re done deleting plugins, click on the Plugins menu and then double-check from within your FTP client that the files have the correct (0755) permission. Then, deactivate the “Chmod Hack” plugin again until you next need it.

    Thread Starter beyondelsewhere

    (@beyondelsewhere)

    19 years ago

    thank you for doing this. I was just able to try it out now since I was away from the computer since I last posted. only it didn’t really work. I was able to delete a couple of the plugins I wanted to, but for a couple of others (like the WPPM itself) it still tells me I have no permission to do anything to the files.

    I did everything you said I should, but it still didn’t work. And I know my host seems to have odd things about it (like when you were trying to help me with the Image Headlines plugin) so maybe it has something to do with that?

    But thank you for taking the time to create that plugin to help!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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