Download failed. Problem with the SSL CA cert (path? access rights?)

Hi Jonathan,

I gotta say I’m a bit bewildered by Host Gator’s approach here. You say you’ve found one instance where disabling plugins resolved the issue, and yet here in this thread (and many other places as well) there’s numerous instances of it being fixed by a much simpler work-around that has nothing to do with plugins. The problem has been shown to be a Host Gator problem (I am still yet to see it with any other host), the exact fix for said problem has been served on a silver platter to you, and still the strategy you seem to be taking (as did all reps I talked to previously) is to point the finger wherever else you can outside of Host Gator. Why would anyone go through the steps you’ve outlined here when the initial workaround I provided is far simpler and doesn’t require finding out one of the plugins you need won’t work?

I apologize if this seems hostile, but please instead take it as a disgruntled customer as trying to encourage a better support strategy. I personally would have rathered Host Gator tell me they don’t support certain WordPress configurations on shared servers than continually try to tell me the problem is my plugins, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If I was told it just wasn’t supported, though I’d be miffed I’d likely consider Host Gator for future hosting needs. But as it is now I’m certain if I have a problem customer support will do what they can to alleviate blame rather than find a solution that works for me, hence I won’t be returning for any reason unless all other hosts vanish off the face of the earth.

And I understand the troubleshooting steps. It’s not unreasonable to suggest disabling and re-enabling plugins as that often does present conflicts within the WordPress ecosystem. But when you have someone who’s already done the research work for you, who presents the problem in detail and even shows you how it’s fixed, you need to give us something more than “it’s a plugin problem.”

Thanks for saying what I’ve been thinking, planetude!

Hi Everyone,

I can certainly appreciate your perspective and of course we would prefer to get to any possible underlying issues as it is not our intention to blame any specific plugin or theme developers. Having said that, unfortunately so far I’ve only had one individual provide me with details that we can use to locate an account experiencing these troubles and in that case we did not find a clear underlying cause relating to our specific server configuration, but we would definitely be glad to investigate again if we can be provided more example domains.

Also, while I’m glad to hear the plugin solution worked for you, we do not often recommend adding an additional plugin when other options are available as it is typically best to keep WordPress installs as trim as possible. Of course you could always add the plugin and remove it but we do try to stick to more common troubleshooting methods when possible instead of adding more plugins to the mix.

I also wanted to mention that in the example we have been provided, we found that all plugins seemed fine after they were reactivated once the WordPress update went through so it was not our intention to say some plugins might need to be sacrificed when trying the method outlined.

If you all could please either shoot me an e-mail to [email protected] (Attention : Jonathan H.) with your domains hosted on HostGator or provide them here in a post, we can certainly revisit this issue once we’ve been provided with more than one example which can then be used to establish any possible common trends.

For the record, Jonathan’s great. He just spent the past little bit digging around my HG account trying to figure out what’s wrong. I had planetude’s plugin installed and all other plugins up-to-date so there was nothing to see, but he was exceptionally helpful and friendly. Good to see HG’s tackling this issue at last!

Hello everyone, Hi JonathanH,

i’m having the same issue on my website, https://www.thecoolstufftobuy.com, whenever i try to update or install a new plugin, i get the error
Update Failed: Download failed. cURL error 77: Problem with the SSL CA cert (path? access rights?)

I contacted the Hostgator Live Chat support, and guess what was their response to my problem, they provided two solutions:
1- wait until april/mai 2017 because they are planning to update the Curl extension (seems like something really hard to do :3)
2- hire a developer to edit the theme plugins to match the current version of Curl installed on their servers..

i was really disappointed by the support.
Could you please help us to solve the problem.

Hi planetude,

Yesterday i’ve updated wordpress to the latest version 4.6 and seems that the workaround is not working any more, could you please check if that’s the case.

are you planning any updatd on the plugin ?

thank you

I too had the: Update Failed: Download failed. cURL error 77: Problem with the SSL CA cert (path? access rights?)
when updating to 4.6 at a Hostgator server.
However the solution by Planetude worked for me – I was able to update to 4.6.
Thank you Planetude

@akh99, did you tried installing a new plugin on the wordpress 4.6 ?? because that’s not working for me.

I uploaded the plugin via ftp to the plugins folder then activated in dashboard.

in my case the “HTTP cURL transport last” plugin stoped working after i upgraded to WordPress 4.6.

is there any solution to that ?

In case anyone else has a problem with cURL on say hostgator or other, I had PHP version 5.6 running on my hosting with hostgator, I talked with Tech support, and while talking (chatting actually) he fixed it in a split second. he set the PHP Version to 7.0, and it solved the problem.

So again, if your running wordpress, and your PHP version on your hosting server is less than 7.0, Turn it to 7.0

ALSO, and a BIG ONE, He Also told me, it is a Plug-in that is causing it to get a Download failed. cURL error 77: Problem with the SSL CA cert (path? access rights?) Error. Disable ALL YOUR PLUG-INs, if you dont want to mess with the server. and start turning them on 1 by one, and install any plug in afterwards to find the problem plugin. its the only other way, than to set your PHP to 7.0