Automatic wordpress upgrade error: Error: There was an error connecting to the server, Please verify the settings are correct.

23 Comments

1. Jim
   Posted July 11, 2009 at 2:55 pm | Permalink

   Fred,

   Have been using WordPress for a short time, but have always had problems with upgrading. I’m hosting on my Leopard Server, and WP runs fine otherwise. I’ve searched around and came upon your post.

   Changed the owner and group of all the files in the blog directory tree and it works! Just upgraded from 2.8 to 2.8.1.

   I did find I had to use “localhost” as my server, but other than that, it was seamless.

   Thanks!

2. Mike
   Posted November 20, 2009 at 2:12 pm | Permalink

   Fred,

   Thanks for the tip regarding the www-data permission in the WordPress directory; I was able to finally use the automatic update function @ localhost. You saved me from hours of headaches!

   Thanks again

3. Fred
   Posted November 20, 2009 at 2:27 pm | Permalink

   You’re welcome! I had this problem too.
   Regards!

4. Nnyan
   Posted January 11, 2010 at 5:48 pm | Permalink

   Just installed 2.9 and I do not have a www-data inside my WP folder

5. mert
   Posted January 19, 2010 at 5:43 am | Permalink

   hello how do i give www-data permission ? can you explain ? i am having the update problem..

6. Fred
   Posted January 28, 2010 at 6:59 am | Permalink

   Run the following command (Debian/Ubuntu) in your WordPress directory (sudo required):

   sudo chown -Rf www-data *

7. Fred
   Posted January 28, 2010 at 7:08 am | Permalink

   Hi,
   www-data is not a folder. www-data is a user/group used for Apache.

8. Phil
   Posted February 3, 2010 at 2:42 am | Permalink

   Hi Fred! This seems like the solution I need! But when I try to give www-data permission, I get the error:

   chown: www-data: Invalid argument

   

9. Fred
   Posted February 3, 2010 at 7:39 am | Permalink

   Hi Phil,
   try this:
   sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R
   What’s your OS?
   Regards

10. Brent Shepherd
    Posted February 4, 2010 at 11:06 am | Permalink

    Thanks! Any ideas why even if a certain user is a member of the www-data group the upgrade sitll fails? I got very mixed results before i chown’d.

11. Fred
    Posted February 4, 2010 at 1:40 pm | Permalink

    Show your results.

12. Brent
    Posted February 5, 2010 at 2:30 am | Permalink

    Don’t worry too much, I tried explaining the ‘mixed’ results but it was terrible bug reporting so won’t bother.

    I should have said though that the owner of the folders/files was the same user being used to ssh in to the server through WP. However, it wouldn’t work correctly until www-data was the owner of the files/folders. I just assumed providing ssh details for a certain user would mean that was the user account under which the commands are performed; however, it seems like it’s actually all done under www-root by the server.

13. Mr Woc
    Posted March 22, 2010 at 1:41 pm | Permalink

    Hi there

    I too was scatching my head trying to get the update to work, i put local host into the server box and low and behold it came to life, when I was convinced it wasnt going to work lol !

    Many thanks
    Woc

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    Posted July 6, 2010 at 9:08 am | Permalink

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22. Ali
    Posted January 15, 2011 at 5:46 pm | Permalink

    Great post. My environment, however, didn’t have ‘www-data’ user/group, but rather ‘apache’. With that, it worked great. Using httpd-2.2.15-1.fc12.2.i686.

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