I followed the Linode Library to setup my firewall rules, and not able to use ftp. The document says "we strongly recommend that you do not use those protocols". I can use sftp to access my dir, but it seems WordPress can't. Then I can't upgrade WordPress in the browser.

I don't have much experiences on using iptables before. Could any please tell me:

1) is the WordPress problem caused by the iptables blocked the ftp ports?
2) how to make WordPress upgrading function work?

Thanks!

FTP does not come installed on a Linode by default, only SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is there.

WordPress is asking for your FTP credentials because it does not have the folder/file permissions to write to its own files. That means, the user that your PHP scripts are being executed as (probably www-data), does not have permission to write to the files/folders where WordPress is installed.

-Tim

Edit: So, to make it work you'd need to make it so WordPress can write. There are a few ways to do it, but I'd suggest looking at the WordPress documentation for any best practices.

Yes, you are right. Thanks man.

I did this post after I found its no use to change the owner of wp-content/upgrade to www-data. Now after I change the permission of the upgrade dir to 777 it works. My bad. :S

Just make sure to change it back to non-writable after you're done with the upgrade.

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rsk, providing useless advice on the Internet since 2005.

Could please explain more. Is it necessary to do that if I'm the only one on this VPS node?