onepursuit

esmi – Would changing the ftp server change the path settings? I didn’t make any specific adjustments to the path, but on my servers, installing proftp definitely works, and using pure-ftpd definitely doesn’t.

Are your installations manual or do you use fantastico? I wonder if fantastico-installed file permissions/ownerships might be different from the “default”.

It would be interesting to find out what all the folks having issues have in common… fantastico? a certain OS? a certain plug-in? etc…

Then what I said doesn’t apply to you. I said that IF you had this issue AND you were running CPanel, try proftp ??

Besides, your WHM admin might already be running proftp and you don’t even know it, in which case you would not have had the problem to begin with.

There might be some other things in the mix… so far, every site I’ve encountered with this issue on a CPanel server has been “fixed” by changing the FTP server. Also, every site I’ve “fixed” so far was originally installed via fantastico, not manually. Every site has multiple additional plugins in the mix. Every site has customized themes. All or none of those variables might or might not have anything to do with the specific conditions that cause the error to show up.

So, IF you have this error, AND you are running CPanel, it wouldn’t hurt to try proftp.

If your WordPress is running on a server that uses CPanel/WHM, WordPress is probably NOT the issue. It’s most likely your FTP server.

The default CPanel installation uses Pure-ftpd as its ftp server. I haven’t dug around enough to figure out why/where, but there appears to be some sort of bug with its handling of permissions.

If you are your own server administrator, you can change from Pure-FTP to ProFTP with a few simple clicks in your WHM (root) interface. From the main screen, under “Service Configuration”, click on “FTP Server Selection”, choose the first option (proftp), then click save. After it is installed, scroll down to the bottom and click on the configuration link to double-check the options (you may want to disable anonymous FTP).

If you are not your server’s administrator (if you do not have access to the superuser WHM account), you will want to to pass this info along to your admin so he/she could make the change for you. Once this is done, both WordPress updates and plugin updates should work without having to keep your permissions dangerously open.