Wordfence preventing plugin updates?

  • Resolved Paul Mycroft

    (@pmycroft)


    2 years, 9 months ago

    Hi all,

    Doing some plugin updates and am seeing an error on many of them, failure to update (red warning).

    “Update Failed: The update cannot be installed because we will be unable to copy some files. This is usually due to inconsistent file permissions.”

    We are seeing many warnings in Wordfence: “This file belongs to plugin “Wordfence Security” version “7.5.7” and has been modified from the file that is distributed by www.remarpro.com for this version.”

    Host says, “WordFence would be blocking you from making the updates based on the information you supplied. You will likely need to adjust the security permissions of WordFence to fix the issue.”

    I deactivated Wordfence but still cannot update plugins.

    Could you let me know what might be happening? Is this correct advice and there is a solution?

    TIA.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @pmycroft, thanks for getting in touch.

    Any behavior that continues when Wordfence is disabled would usually suggest to me that it’s not being caused by Wordfence. Whilst Wordfence will scan your plugin files to ensure they have not been altered from the www.remarpro.com repository version(s) during scans, it is not part of the feature set to actively block plugins from updating.

    Make sure that permissions on your WordPress site’s directories are 755 and that the owner on your WordPress root directory (and all contained directories) is www-data. Web servers such as Apache, Nginx, etc will require www-data to be an owner so that WordPress and plugins can update and run functions required to do so.

    Other than this, you may need to try disabling all plugins and see if updates are possible with nothing else intervening. If you can’t even update with the correct permissions and other plugins disabled, it’s likely to be a configuration issue with your site. Perhaps the general WordPress forums or hosting support could further assist in this eventuality.

    Let us know how you get on!

    Peter.

    Thread Starter Paul Mycroft

    (@pmycroft)

    Hi Peter,

    All fixed. As we suspected, it was nothing to do with the WF plugin.

    “Some file permissions were wonky. There is a “Permission Fixer” available in cPanel that fixes this kind of thing. Wrote it myself because cPanel doesn’t have its own.”

    Thanks!

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