[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #36758: Have to grant www-data ownership to upgrade to 4.5.x?

[WordPress Trac]

#36758: Have to grant www-data ownership to upgrade to 4.5.x?
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 Reporter:  btrent98         |      Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)     |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal           |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Upgrade/Install  |    Version:  4.4.2
 Severity:  normal           |   Keywords:
  Focuses:                   |
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 I'm running several servers from end-user accounts under Debian
 Jessie/Apache2.4. The WP files are owned by <acctname>:www-data, with the
 www-data group having write access only to those few specifically required
 directories, such as wp-content/uploads.

 After running in this configuration for years and many different
 versions/upgrades (of both WordPress and Debian), I was unable to upgrade
 from 4.4.2 to 4.5.x by using the built-in upgrade feature in the backend.
 Installation fails ("The update could not be unpacked"). I also noticed
 that, with 4.4.2 the .maintenance is not removed after updating plugins.
 It has to be removed manually.

 I discovered that an effective workaround to both of these issues is to
 grant www-data ownership to all the files in the webroot directory
 (recursively) before performing the upgrade/update operations. When this
 is done the upgrade to 4.5.x succeeds and, when plugins are updated, the
 .maintenance file is successfully removed after the update. I change
 ownership back to <acctname> after the upgrade/updates are completed.

 Is there a change to how WP determines upgradability at 4.4.2? Is this a
 bug or a feature? The undeleted .maintenance file seems like a bug to me
 for sure.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/36758>
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