what version were you updating from?

any idea what this is:  http://www.OurSiteInstallnetwork.com/forum/forum-OurSiteInstall/page-2/

its not from us… and its the referrer…  unless that is just a topic or forum you have in your site…  in which case it wont be related to the upgrade…

does this file exist:  /wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/sp-plugin-styles-all.css

are you using the combined css and js?  its on forum – options – global settings… though dont believe it has anything to do with upgrades… but you could try disabling it..

the error message:

“An error occurred while updating Simple:Press: Could not remove the old plugin.”

is coming from wp… when wp updates a plugin (the plugin itself is out of the loop), it first removes the existing plugin and then downloads the new one…  in this case, wp is saying it couldnt remove the plugin so it couldnt install the new one…

you probably should check on permissions for wp to remove plugins… does that ever happen on other plugins?  again, the plugin is out of the loop here totally…

at this point, since the wp update failed, you might go ahead and download a copy from our site and ftp it up to your site….

Hello Mr. Papa, 

I’m upgrading from the last version which the site considered to be updated (don’t know what that is). I’m updating because the updates page indicates there is an update.

The URL above is just a placeholder URL so that I don’t advertise this site’s URL.

The file doesn’t exist in /wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/sp-plugin-styles-all.css because the directory doesn’t exist. 

I did a test install of Simple-Press on a new site and after the install there was an error notification about an sp-resources folder not unzipping and I needed to unzip two files and manually create a directory (and the name of the directory I should create was blank).

The forum integrations page showed that five items were (x) red because the /wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/ folder structure didn’t exist. So this blogs.dir world doesn’t exist on an existing installation where the forum works fine. And it wasn’t created on a new install. But our server logs indicate that something is calling for those files in that /wp-content/blogs.dir/ folder structure.

I can’t disable the combined JS CSS feature because I uploaded the latest version of the forum via FTP and the forum is now not available. The forum page gives a redirect loop error.

So I went to the Forum admin menu and there is no forum admin sub menu. The only option is to upgrade the forum.

I followed that link and it loaded a page which gave me two buttons to either Perform Upgrade or to Perform Network Upgrade.

I clicked Perform Upgrade and the page is sitting and spinning again (endlessly), with a message, “Upgrade is in progress–please wait. Below that is a box with a message that says: “Upgrade Aborted current build 9877.”

So after waiting more than 10 minutes I refreshed the page and tried the Perform Network Upgrade option. Now the page is sitting and spinning again with the same two messages: “Upgrade is in progress–please wait. Below that is a box with a message that says: “Upgrade Aborted current build 9877.”

And there is a third message: “Upgrading Network Site ID: 1”

While we have a multisite install we’re only using one site right now.

So I tried the FTP upgrade and it failed. And because this is a large site with several thousand paying members I’ve got to restore it to the point before I tried this update. 

I seem to be stuck with an un-upgradable forum now. It fails automatically and it fails via FTP.

Now what can I do?

Thank you, 

Chris

Hello Again, 

I restored to the previous point.

Because you asked, “are you using the combined css and js?  its on forum – options – global settings…” and then mentioned, “…you could try disabling it.”  I went to that page and while the forum options page loads, the global settings page just sits and spins.

I can’t disable all the plugins and have a go at the site due to the amount of global members who are logged in at any given time. But I’m getting to the point where I may have to take the site offline, disable all the plugins, and try and update the forum.

I’ll be happy to get any guidance.

Thank you, 

Chris

so at this point, we need to understand why the upgrade is bailing… sometimes other plugins are polluting ajax responses causing the json to fail – frequently this is security plugins… any of those?

best way to get more info is to have the browser console open before you hit upgrade…  when you hit upgrade, you will see some responses coming into the console window…   you can expand the response and see a full message…  please post that here…

Hello, 

I backed up the site and database.

I disabled all plugins except for Simple-Press and WP Maintenance Mode which let’s everybody NOT see the site without plugins.

I went to the updates page and opened the browser console (Chrome: CTRL + SHIFT + J).

When I clicked to update I got this again:

– – – 

Update Plugins

Caution: Maintenance mode is active! Deactivate or change Settings

The update process is starting. This process may take a while on some hosts, so please be patient.

Enabling Maintenance mode…

Updating Plugin Simple:Press (1/1)

Downloading update from https://simple-press.com/download-manager.php?id=674…

Unpacking the update…

Installing the latest version…

Removing the old version of the plugin…

Plugin update failed.

An error occurred while updating Simple:Press: Could not remove the old plugin.

Disabling Maintenance mode…

All updates have been completed.

Upgrade the Simple:Press Database | Return to WordPress Updates | Return to Plugins page

– – – 

And the console flashed a URL and a brief message very quickly and then went blank. The console is empty. At the bottom of the console window if I click Errors, Warnings or Logs they are all empty also.

I will restore the site to the previous point and then try disabling the maint. mode plugin before doing the update.

Chris

Hello,

This time I tried updating the Simple-Press forum plugin with all plugins de-activated (except for Simple-Press).

I went to the plugins page and the only plugin available is Simple-Press:

– – –

Simple:Press
Uninstall | Network Deactivate
Fully featured but simple page-based forum

Version 5.2.6 | By Andy Staines & Steve Klasen | Visit plugin site
Latest version available: 5.3 Build: 10449 – Simple:Press Version 5.3 Release, Build 10449 is now available for download. This release includes new features and bug fixes. It requires WP 3.6 since WP core functionality has changed. Thus it is a recommended upgrade for all users. See the changelog for complete details. Please note, this version of Simple:Press requires WP 3.6.
For details and to download please visit Simple:Press or update automatically

– – –

I selected update automatically.

And I get this page again:

The update process is starting. This process may take a while on some hosts, so please be patient.

Enabling Maintenance mode…

Updating Plugin Simple:Press (1/1)
Downloading update from https://simple-press.com/download-manager.php?id=674…
Unpacking the update…
Installing the latest version…
Removing the old version of the plugin…
Plugin update failed.
An error occurred while updating Simple:Press: Could not remove the old plugin.

Disabling Maintenance mode…

All updates have been completed.

Upgrade the Simple:Press Database | Return to WordPress Updates | Return to Plugins page

– – –

I tried removing the plugin via FTP and uploading the new version via FTP and it failed.

I’m uncertain if I can delete the plugin entirely and re-install it as a new plugin using the newest version–and if it will keep all the previous forum settings and content.

I’ll back things up and try that.

Chris

Steve (Mr Papa) really covered this in post 2 above. The question is not really a Simple:Press question as such but more a server/WP question in why can not WordPress remove old plugin files? Like Steve – I would suspect some sort of permissions issue. There again I have never looked at the WP updater code itself.

As he said above – you can do this manually. Just remove the current ‘simple-press’ folder under ‘plugins’ and replace the whole thing with a new one downloaded from here. And of FTP doesn’t work on the current folder then I would most definitely suspect a permission issue.

Hello, 

Thank you for the support.

The FTP didn’t fail. I FTP without permissions issues. After I did the FTP upload the forum update failed.

After I renamed the original simple-press folder and FTP’d up the latest version folder the literal Simple-Press update continued to have the same issue.

This happened even after I disabled all plugins and took the site down late at night.

During the interim several other plugin updates have been released and I updated those and let the forum sit.

All the while in the server error logs there were repeat errors listed about simple-press so I knew I needed to fix this.

Then randomly, more than a week later now, I used the update button in the WordPress updates page and Simple-Press updated. Then in the dashboard menu I hovered over Forum and clicked the update there. And everything worked.

Whatever. It’s working and very little blood was spilled.

Thank you again,

Chris

thanks for the update…