For a reason I haven’t figured out, I stopped getting prompts to update plugins and themes, so I installed GitHub Updater and that seemed to solve the issue with most things. Everything is updating except the following themes: McLuhan, Aldine, and Donham.
When I attempt to update all three themes I get the following message for McLuhan and Aldine only: “Update Failed: The update cannot be installed because we will be unable to copy some files. This is usually due to inconsistent file permissions.” Donham indicates that it has updated, but when I refresh or log out and back in, it has not “taken” and prompts me to update again.
I’ve checked with our server maintainer and he says “The permissions are correct. Without auditing their code I cannot resolve the issue.”
Here are the theme versions I am trying to update from:
Aldine: 1.6.0 --> 1.8.0
McLuhan: 2.8.1 --> 2.10.0
Donham: 1.7.0 --> 2.0.0
Is this a GitHub updater issue? Something else?
UPDATE: When attempting to update a theme directly in GitHub Updater in the Install Theme tab, the following error appears: “Destination folder already exists. /var/www/html/wp-content/themes/pressbooks-aldine/. Theme installation failed.”
UPDATE: Our server admin was able to login as me to the Admin pages and update Aldine and McLuhan. Can’t explain that really.
However, still no Donham. Our admin claims that "The Donham theme is broken. The config is wrong. The version on their server is lying about the version.
After update, the version in the control file reads.
So you can see the file was updated
-rw-r–r-- 1 www-data www-data 632 Mar 31 17:18 style.css
But it has the wrong version.
/*
Theme Name: Donham
Theme URI: https://pressbooks.com/themes/donham/
Description: This theme is named after Wallace Donham, Dean of Harvard Business School from 1919 to 1942. The Donham theme is a light, modern theme, equally effective for non-fiction and fiction. Body font is Tinos, and Header font is Galdeano. An earlier version of this theme was commissioned by Harvard Business Review Press.
Author: Pressbooks (Book Oven Inc.)
Author URI: https://pressbooks.com
Copyright: 2011-2017 Pressbooks (Book Oven Inc. code@pressbooks.com
Version: 1.7.0
Template: pressbooks-book
GitHub Theme URI: pressbooks/pressbooks-donham
*/
hi @beckej & @figureone can either of you attach a screenshot showing what you’re seeing from the plugins dashboard or wherever else you’re seeing the error message(s) for McLuhan and Donham? We should be able to take a look at this later this week, but I don’t know what you’re seeing exactly because we use different methods for updating plugins and themes in our local, staging, and production environments.
We don’t see any error messages or other ill effects, the only symptom we see is that Pressbooks constantly tells us that we need to upgrade this plugin.
Thanks @beckej – the Donham error I understand (it’s a problem we created), but I’m confused as to why you’re not able to update McLuhan, which does have a 2.11.1 version released, tagged, and available via GitHub: Release McLuhan 2.11.1 · pressbooks/pressbooks-book · GitHub. Does the method described by @figureone earlier
I was able to update successfully after refreshing the GitHub Updater plugin cache (Dashboard > Settings > Github Updater > Refresh Cache)
@beckej it sounds to me like GitHub Updater is not fetching new metadata from GitHub. GitHub recently changed the format of their Personal Access Tokens which the plugin uses to avoid throttling when querying GitHub for updates. See:
It’s possible that you will need to generate a new token and add it to the plugin at Dashboard > Settings > GitHub Updater > GitHub (tab), and then click Refresh Cache. You should see the list of plugins/themes on that page, and whether their latest information has been fetched from GitHub.
Thanks for your help. I did update the cache yesterday before trying to update, and I did it again today. Going to the Github page under settings, I was able to confirm that all my plugins were listed. When I tried again to update it did it fine.
