I see that the older version is up and running so we can do this a little slowly. Sorry you have had a few problems here. There are three separate issues that appear to have conspired so I understand the frustration.

First up – yes the version you had been, and are once again using, did indeed, accidentally go out with the wrong header information, Hence the check in the later update. So that means you are actually using version 5.5.7 and that issue was described in our post at https://simple-press.com/simplepress-version-5-5-8-available-now/

The ‘Service Unavailable’ issue when trying to download has actually happened to 2 or 3 people. This is our server issuing a 503 status. The large majority of users have had no problem reaching our server but clearly some sort of intermittent issue is going on. I would normally suspect an overload of visitors at one time but we do not think that is the issue. This one, I am afraid, is still under investigation. These things are often so much simpler to diagnose when it effects everyone!

The more important issue is the last one which is the failure to upgrade. I can see from the numbers that this is an immediate error condition. I have to say that if we attempt this we will encounter the same issue.

So I need to explain what the issue is exactly as the fix will have to come from you – or – more probably – your hosting company.

The issue is those two Notices being displayed. While Notices are largely unimportant and more of an irritant than anything, in this case they are negatively effecting the return status codes of the upgrade causing it to fail. Sadly those two are virtually unavoidable at that point in the upgrade.

But – such notices (or Warning and Errors) should never be displayed to the screen, It is considered very bad practice on a public facing website as it can disclose path information that can aid those maliciously minded amongst us. It is useful for a site under development but not for an active site and it should be turned off. This has to happen in your php.ini file on your server. If you have access to this then you can do it yourself but mostly it needs to be done by your hosting company. They should not have had it set to display in the first place of course. Bad, bad practice.

I have actually, while writing this sadly long response, opened a note here to see if we can programatically turn of error display during the upgrade process but that is not an ideal solution.

I think you will find that if your host makes this vital change and restarts your server then the upgrade will complete as it should. At least it has for all other users as far as we are aware.

I lease a dedicated server that is peaked with excessive configurations (1G versus 100MB per account, 32MB RAM, Xeon W5580 processor, SATA drives, etc.). I am the host with multiple accounts, develop sites and systems.

It is a managed server, therefore this is response from the server technician:

I believe the message you sent along is referring to the ‘display_errors’ setting, which is actually set to Off in the main php.ini file. If the user has a local copy that has it turned on, however, it’ll override the global setting.

I never use .htaccess or a custom php.ini file to override server settings. All accounts are referencing the server settings, however the errors are still fully displayed across the top of the website. The error log at /public_html/ populates and it too contained the same error messages.

Attached is the PHP.ini in a ZIP archive, which doesn’t exploit my server, for your review.

What next?

strange, because any notices or warnings being displayed (the actual display, not the cause) is completely beyond our control and is totally up to the server…  and unfortunately corrupts the upgrade ajax response…

at this point, and odd how its unique to you, I would go into the sp-site-constants.php file and try commenting out lines 61 and 62…  then run the upgrade… and then uncomment out those lines…

and just an fyi, but 5.5.11 was released today too… but once you get the upgrade to 5.5.10, you wont see the notices any further…

Greetings,

I did notice later in the wp-config.php file, the setting define(‘WP_DEBUG’, 1);. After looking up this specific php constant here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Debugging_in_WordPress it appears that having this setting set to 1 or true will ‘Enabling WP_DEBUG will cause all PHP errors, notices and warnings to be displayed.’ This setting was interfering with the display_errors setting in the php.ini.

The following setting in the /home/xxxxxxx/public_html/wp-config.php file had been changed from: define(‘WP_DEBUG’, 1); To: define(‘WP_DEBUG’, 0);

After doing so, I manually downloaded 5.5.11 from the cart, and then manually replaced. Updated the database and now all is well! Thanks for your assistance.

As a note, I still could not update the base code or the simple:press plugins automatically anymore. All the other plugin updates, not a problem. I tried to update the Simple:Press plugins after the successful 5.5.11 install, and the same error shows: An error occurred while updating Post Ratings: Download failed. Service Unavailable.  I checked file permissions on the wp-content folder, and it is set to 755.

I then tried adding this line at the top of the root file: wp-config.php

To force the temp directory update to a unique subfolder and that worked. Something is amiss with the Simple:Press updates after 5.5.10.

Steven

That would have been one of my next suggestions. Was not my first because it is so unusual to see a user who has that directive either off or on!

Good news on the upgrade. Thanks for updating the topic here,

I was checking back to see if I can gain help from the above inquiry (Post #5, Paragraph 4), where any attempt to update a plugin for Simple:Press results in: An error occurred while updating [Plugin Name]: Download failed. Service Unavailable

I need to update Post Ratings to 1.5.6, Private Message System to 2.1.15, Search to 1.1.5 and Subscriptions to 1.4.12 but cannot find a direct download for those.

Is there any way to gain a archive with those plugin archived and resident for installation?

You appear to be one of 3 users experiencing the ‘Service Unavailable’ issue – at least as far as informing us in concerned. We did check last night with another user that there is no blacklisting of IP addresses involved. So we are somewhat stumped at the moment.

This is a long way from my area of expertise but it might be useful to know what elements all three of you have in common. I was going to ask all three of you if you could possibly check with your hosting support – sending them the update url – in case they can provide a logical explanation.

Meanwhile – I am sorry you have to do this the old fashioned way. Oh how moving technology has caused us all to forget! 🙂

All plugins, themes, core etc., are available for download from our store. Click on the store menu item, then follow plugins – find the one you need and select the group, find the plugin you need and click on the name or image and you will get to the download page where you can download it and then install it manually. A little more long-winded than it used to be I know but you will end up with a download link and a zero dollar invoice!

Hello,

I inserted a short script in my themes functions.php to capture error messages during plugin updates, but no log was generated.  Meaning there is no WordPress or other plugin related conflict.

It is something about the URL string that is not fetching the archive. For example:

https://simple-press.com/download-manager.php?id=625&wpupdate=1
An error occurred while updating Post Ratings: Download failed. Service Unavailable

If I insert that direct string as a URL, it will not open or download anything in Internet Explorer 11. I tried again while logged into Google Chrome version 45, to update the plugin “Post Ratings” from the Dashboard, same error message. When I paste the URL, the “post-ratings.zip” file immediately downloads to my local “Downloads” folder. Of course, Chrome and Firefox are far more user friendly when downloading files from a link, than is Internet Explorer.

Same results when attempted in Firefox version 40.2. Error message, but download possible from direct URL. I don’t use any exotic browser plugins in any browser.

There is a disconnect between the file download and getting it the WordPress update directory. The updates are simply not downloading Simple:Press updates only. The only change since the last successful Simple:Press update was WordPress was updated from 4.1.7 to 4.3.

We understand all of this and also understand the frustration and want to get to the bottom of it. The question remains why 3 users out of X hundreds of users?

Which is why I was seeing if we could try and determine common factors and suggested we start by asking your host support. We do not expect this to be a conflict with another plugin or anything like that. It is far more likely to be a sever issue of some sort. Do your server logs have any further information as they sometimes do?

/usr/local/apache/logs/error_log

The last date the server reports a error on the blog is from the log is [Mon Jul 06 18:43:29 2015] [error].. nothing recent. None of the old errors have anything to do with simple:press.

Simple:press is installed in combination with Magic Members. Don’t know if that is a common denominator or not?

This is the other thread: https://simple-press.com/support-forum/sp5-general-topics/trouble-updating/page-5/#p155521

Could I suggest you move over to that thread which is dedicated to this issue and would get all three of you into a single topic. perhaps uou could also take a look at the last post I just made in that thread.

I guess I’m one of the three having the issue. I thought that it might be my host as well but have moved the site to a new dedicated machine and have the same issue.

Granted, all files were cloned so any conflicts would remain the same. I presently have the forum on a dedicated server at GoDaddy.

Still anxious to resolve this issue but have gotten used to copying the address of the plugin and pasting it into the browser for an automatic download. Then installing it via FTP.

The plugin which is a pain is the updated core which now a days needs to be added to the cart…. etc.

The other addresses are short enough to copy from the back end on the error message. 🙂

yes, a handful of similar issues…  but we are unable to replicate and nothing in the logs shows a problem… we are a bit stymied…  affecting such a low number of users, but we want it zero….  we continue to investigate but not much info to go on…

was this new machine with same host?

have you tried it with all other wp plugins disabled and the default wp theme active?  (gives us more data)

any mod_security, security plugins or other firewall type software?