wordpress wants ftp information to update plugins

January 30th, 2009 by Lawrence David

if you get these errors when trying to have wordpress automatically update your plugins:

“To perform the requested action, connection information is required”

“Failed to connect to FTP Server“

try making sure that your webserver owns your wordpress directory. i fixed everything by going to the root of my wordpress directory and entering:

/home/wordpress/> sudo chown -R www-data:www-data *

Posted in Webserver | 11 Comments »

if that was helpful ...

check out the other tips and tricks i've compiled on these pages. you might learn something else interesting!

11 Responses to “wordpress wants ftp information to update plugins”

on 31 Jan 2009 at 9:52 am alfredo

this works as long as you are in a Debian or Debian based installation.

The “webserver” user for Debian based distros is “www-data”

But for CentOS / RedHat / Fedora, the user is: “apache”

It is useful to note that it may vary.
on 21 Jun 2009 at 10:40 am surlyjake

Thanks.
if you run something other than debian, take a look at ‘top’ while apache is running to see what user account it uses.
on 10 Feb 2010 at 7:10 am Stephen

On MacOS X the user is _www.
on 04 Apr 2010 at 9:09 am Alinn

Great! My problem is solved.
Thanks a lot
on 18 Jun 2010 at 8:58 am allenm

Thanks a ton. I wish the docs/forums at wordpress.org had this information.
on 27 Jul 2010 at 2:54 am Jared

Be aware that while this method does make WP auto updates work, it can open a can of worms that will cause you frustration and possible security risks down the road.

There is a great article at nerdgrind.com that shows you a better way and illustrates the security risks you will find with other methods.

http://www.nerdgrind.com/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin-failed-or-not-working/
on 18 Sep 2010 at 5:13 am Eric

http://www.nerdgrind.com/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin-failed-or-not-working/
on 19 Feb 2011 at 8:08 am Internet Marketing For MLM

This nerdgrind link is brilliant – much more useful than the wordpress forum. Just wish I found it first!

WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin Failed or Not Working
on 17 Jun 2011 at 6:35 pm Great

Wonderful go through because I was unsure what to do and just found my personal remedy
on 30 Jan 2012 at 10:07 am Jarwain

FUCK YES
Thank you so much alfredo. Your tip finally made it work. :3
Now I gotta go restore default permissions somehow…
on 26 Feb 2012 at 11:22 pm Edwin

Thank you. It works like a charm on Ubuntu 11.10

Did I get this wrong? Let me know!

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