CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpwordpressftp
furyfish
furyfish

Reputation: 2135

Wordpress plugin install: Could not create directory

I'm using WordPress on centos 6.

I try to install a plugin. But I got this error:

Installing Plugin: bbPress 2.5.9 Downloading install package from https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/bbpress.2.5.9.zip…

Unpacking the package…

Could not create directory.

How can I resolve this?

P/S: I run this command:

sudo -u root touch /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/test.txt

and it works. But I still get that error.

Upvotes: 86

Views: 212857

Answers (21)

asb14690
asb14690

Reputation: 1837

You only need to change the access permissions for your WordPress Directory:

chown -R www-data:www-data your-wordpress-directory

Best practices:

sudo find /var/www/html/wordpress/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/html/wordpres/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

or

find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Where . is the path of WordPress directory.

Upvotes: 136

Genaut
Genaut

Reputation: 1851

If you are using some app that wraps http, you have to set these user in the command.

sudo chown -R [desireduser]:[desireduser] wp-content/

By example, if you are using lampp, the users that init httpd is "daemon" and the command that works will be:

sudo chown -R [desireduser]:[desireduser] wp-content/

You can search in your httpd.conf file enter image description here

Upvotes: 0

Shakiba Moshiri
Shakiba Moshiri

Reputation: 23794

CentOS7 or Ubuntu 16

1.

WordPress uses ftp to install themes and plugins.
So the ftpd should have been configured to create-directory

vim /etc/pure-ftpd.confg

and if it is no then should be yes

# Are anonymous users allowed to create new directories?
AnonymousCanCreateDirs       yes

lastly

sudo systemctl restart pure-ftpd

2.

Maybe there is an ownership issue with the parent directories. Find the Web Server user name and group name if it is Apache Web Server

apachectl -S

it will print

...
...
User: name="apache" id=997
Group: name="apache" id=1000

on Ubuntu it is

User: name="www-data" id=33 not_used
Group: name="www-data" id=33 not_used

then

sudo chown -R apache:apache directory-name

3.

Sometimes it is because of directories permissions. So try

sudo chmod -R 755 directory-name

in some cases 755 does not work. (It should & I do not no why) so try

sudo chmod -R 777 directory-name

4.

Maybe it is because of php safe mode. So turn it off in the root of your domain

vim php.ini

then add

safe_mode = Off

NOTE:
For not entering FTP username and password each time installing a theme we can configure WordPress to use it directly by adding

define('FS_METHOD','direct');

to the wp-config.php file.

Upvotes: 7

Mahdi Bashirpour
Mahdi Bashirpour

Reputation: 18803

Webserver user must have write access to directories to perform such operations, so you can try to change owner of files to webserver user (apache in this example, but can be differ from yours)

chown -R apache YOUR_BLOG_DIRECTORY

Upvotes: 0

MD SHAYON
MD SHAYON

Reputation: 8055

You could try

sudo chmod goa=rwx -R /var/www/html

Upvotes: 3

Uzair
Uzair

Reputation: 17

None of the above work for me except this one.

sudo chown daemon:daemon /opt/bitnami/apache/htdocs/

Don't forget to change /opt/bitnami/apache/htdocs/ to your directory

Upvotes: 0

Fitsum Alemu
Fitsum Alemu

Reputation: 409

If you are mac user , using XAMP

Go to the htdocs folder and open the terminal on the folder , as shown in the screenshot

enter image description here

Then Type the following command on the Terminal

**sudo chmod -R 777 <your wordpress folder Name>/**

E.g sudo chmod -R 777 wordpress/

Upvotes: 10

MD SHAYON
MD SHAYON

Reputation: 8055

You need to change the permission of the directory

  1. At first change the user HTML folder (replace yourcomputerusername)

    sudo chown yourcomputerusername:yourcomputerusername /var/www/html

  2. Next change the permission for the user

    cd /var/www/html

    sudo chmod -R goa=rwx wordpress

    or

    sudo chmod -R 777 wordpress/wp-content

Upvotes: 4

Y. Joy Ch. Singha
Y. Joy Ch. Singha

Reputation: 3252

wordpressProject is the project name. 

/var/www/html/wordpressProject sudo chmod -R 777 wp-content

Thanks. It will work.

Upvotes: -4

Pelle
Pelle

Reputation: 1252

If you have installed wordpress using apt, the config files are split in multiple directories. In that case you need to run:

sudo chown -R -h www-data:www-data /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content/
sudo chown -R -h www-data:www-data /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/

The -h switch changes the permissions for symlinks as well, otherwise they are not removable by user www-data

Upvotes: 11

Ishwar
Ishwar

Reputation: 6161

To solve permission issue on ubuntu server, you just run this

sudo chmod 777 -R 'wordpress wp-content file location'

for example.

sudo chmod 777 -R /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content

Upvotes: -3

Gabi L
Gabi L

Reputation: 303

I had to give ownership of /plugins and /upgrade to the server, nothing else.

$ cd /var/www/wordpress/wp-content
$ sudo chown www-data:www-data /plugings
$ sudo chown www-data:www-data /upgrade

Running Apache server on Ubuntu 18.04. Maybe more dirs will need to be changed later. Anyways, I plan to restore permissions once I finish editing, as suggested in this anwser.

Upvotes: 11

TLbiz
TLbiz

Reputation: 497

To solve permission issue on plugins and themes on localhost or production quickly, you just run this

sudo chmod 757 wp-content/themes
sudo chmod 757 wp-content/plugins

if take care permission on production, you can run

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data wp-content/themes
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data wp-content/plugins

Upvotes: 8

Googie
Googie

Reputation: 6017

For me the problem was FTP server that WP is using to upload update. It had writting disabled in configuration, so just enabling it fixed the problem.

Shame on WordPress for providing such misleading error message.

Upvotes: 1

Hitesh Ranaut
Hitesh Ranaut

Reputation: 747

What I end up doing is every time I create a WordPress project. in /www/html

I run below command

sudo chown www-data:www-data  wordpress_folder_name -R

hope this will help someone.

Upvotes: 2

Sunil Kumar
Sunil Kumar

Reputation: 6630

I was on XAMPP for linux localhost and this worked for me:

sudo chown -R my-linux-username wp-content

Upvotes: 2

Azam Alvi
Azam Alvi

Reputation: 7055

You can fix this by using the following commands. You should first be in the root folder of Wordpress.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data wp-content/plugins/
sudo chmod 775 wp-content

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data wp-content/

Upvotes: 93

Louis Byun
Louis Byun

Reputation: 1

Absolutely it must be work!

  • Use this chown -Rf www-data:www-data /var/www/html

Upvotes: -9

Rana.Asif
Rana.Asif

Reputation: 443

If anyone using shared hosting and get same problem it may be disk space issue. In that case contact with your hosting support and ask them to increase disk space of your acocunt.

Upvotes: 3

Severino Lorilla Jr.
Severino Lorilla Jr.

Reputation: 1637

A quick solution would be to change the permissions of the following:

  • /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content
  • /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins

Change it to 775.

After installation, don't forget to change it back to the default permissions.. :D

Upvotes: 17

kevr
kevr

Reputation: 455

The user that is running your web server does not have permissions to write to the directory that Wordpress is intending to create the plugin directory in. You should chown the directory in question to the user that is running Wordpress. It is most likely not root.

In short, this is a permissions issue. Your touch command is working because you're using it as root, and root has global permissions to write wherever it wants.

Upvotes: 21

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