WordPress core update not working? Suhoshin might be the reason. +

Ran into some trouble trying to update to the latest version (2.8.6). The automatic core updater kept dying on me with nothing but an ‘Unpacking update’ message. Nothing in the error_log file, no core dumps, no warnings, just stuck. And it used to work flawlessly until now.

Anyways, it’s sorted now — and updated — but here’s the scoop in case someone else runs into a similar situation:

WordPress tries to increase the memory limit of php to ‘256M’ during the unzipping process of the update. If you’re on a shared hosting setup, chances are it’s running php with the suhoshin patch. Suhoshin was (and still is) set up to prevent raising the memory limit via ini_set() over the size defined in php.ini (currently at 32M).

Solutions:

• Ask your hosting company to temporarily increase or remove the suhoshin-patch limit, run the update, let them revert the limit back (over in 2 minutes)
• Modify your ‘wp-admin/includes/file.php:484’ and try setting a lower limit (128, 64?) and see if the update process manages to extract all the files successfully (it probably will)
• Update your wp manually