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Rollback Update Failure

By WP Core Contributors

Description

This is a feature plugin for testing automatic rollback of a plugin or theme update failure.

It is based on the PR for #51857. Current PR #2225 and PR #3958 for inclusion to core.

  • When updating a plugin/theme, the old version of the plugin/theme gets moved to a wp-content/temp-backup/plugins/PLUGINNAME or wp-content/temp-backup/themes/THEMENAME folder. The reason we chose to move instead of zip, is because zipping/unzipping are very resources-intensive processes, and would increase the risk on low-end, shared hosts. Moving on the other hand is performed instantly and won’t be a bottleneck.
  • If the update fails, then the “backup” we kept in the temp-backup folder gets restored to its original location
  • If the update succeeds, then the “backup” is deleted
  • 2 new checks were added in the site-health screen:
    • Check to make sure that the rollbacks folder is writable.
    • Check there is enough disk-space available to safely perform updates.

To avoid confusion: The “temp-backup” folder will NOT be used to “roll-back” a plugin to a previous version after an update. This folder will simply contain a transient backup of the previous version of a plugins/themes getting updated, and as soon as the update process finishes, the folder will be empty.

Testing

  • If the wp-content/temp-backup folder is not writable, there should be an error in the site-health screen.
  • If the server has less than 20MB available, there should be an error in the site-health screen that updates may fail.
  • If the server has less than 100MB, it should be a notice that disk space is running low.
  • When updating a plugin, you should be able to see the old plugin in the wp-content/temp-backup/plugins/PLUGINNAME folder. The same should apply for themes. Since updates sometimes run fast and we may miss the folder creation during testing, you can simulate an update failure to demonstrate. This will return early and skip deleting the backup on update-success.

  • When a plugin update fails, the previous version should be restored. To test that, change the version of a plugin to a previous number, run the update, and on fail the previous version (the one where you changed the version number) should still be installed on the site. To simulate an update failure and confirm this works, you can use the snippet below:

    add_filter( 'upgrader_install_package_result', function() {
    return new WP_Error( 'simulated_error', 'Simulated Error' );
});

Alternatively you can install the Rollback Update Testing plugin, activating it as needed.

Or use the built-in simulate failure feature. Just activate/deactivate from the plugins.php page action link.

Reporting

Please submit issues and PRs to GitHub.

Logo from a meme generator. Original artwork by Allie Brosh.

Reviews

Useless against Fatal Errors

July 11, 2022 2 replies
When a plugin update succeeds, but the new version causes a Fatal Error (like what recently happened with WP Crontrol version 1.13.x), you would expect Rollback Update Failure to roll back the offending plugin to the previous version, but alas! Rollback Update Failure isn't immune to Fatal Errors. What it needs is an external Cron process OUTSIDE of WordPress that monitors an update log for an update, followed by Fatal Errors in the PHP error log, and then does what Rollback Update Failure is supposed to do, otherwise WordPress is always going to be susceptible to idiot plugin developers that cause Fatal Errors with plugin updates.

Wow!

July 14, 2021 1 reply
That is great! I have just one question! How many times this plugin could roll back a theme or a plugin update, can it roll back for example three steps back? Thank you for your answer in advance!
Read all 5 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Rollback Update Failure” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Rollback Update Failure” has been translated into 7 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Rollback Update Failure” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

Please see the Github repository: CHANGELOG.md.

5.0.2 / 2023-02-05

  • make variables static to retain value during auto-updater run

5.0.1 / 2023-02-03

  • ensure move_dir() called with 3rd parameter as move_dir($from, $to, true)

5.0.0 / 2023-02-02

  • during WP_Rollback_Auto_Update::restart_updates remove shutdown hook for WP_Upgrader::delete_temp_backup
  • skip second sequential call to create_backup
  • now require at least WP 6.2-beta1, deactivate if requirements not met
  • Faster Updates no longer required as committed to core

4.1.2 / 2023-01-25

  • update move_dir() for new parameter

4.1.1 / 2023-01-20

  • ensure specific functions are loaded to check for Faster Updates

4.1.0 / 2023-01-19

  • change directory name of rollback to distinguish from update.
  • update for move_dir() possibly returning WP_Error
  • fix sprintf error

4.0.0 / 2023-01-10

  • cast upgrade_plugins transient to object, overkill but someone reported an error
  • merge Rollback Auto Update
  • require Faster Updates for move_dir(), auto-install/activate
  • no longer requires special filter in WP_Upgrader::install_package
  • testing only on update-core.php

3.3.2 / 2022-12-30

3.3.1 / 2022-10-25

  • use array_unique when saving simulated failure options
  • load failure simulator in init hook for WP-CLI

3.3.0 / 2022-10-14

  • use wp-content/temp-backup and not wp-content/upgrade/temp-backup as WP_Upgrader::unpack_package deletes contents of wp-content-upgrade at each update
  • add simulated failure into plugin

3.2.1 / 2022-09-23

  • bump auto-deactivation check for WP version

3.2.0 / 2022-09-19

  • backup runs on upgrader_source_selection from upgrader_pre_install to resolve an edge case
  • rename functions for action not hook

3.1.1 / 2022-07-31

  • update VirtualBox testing URL in readme(s)

3.1.0 / 2022-06-27

  • fix to ensure restore functions correctly during bulk update

3.0.0 / 2022-06-14

  • remove references to VirtualBox
  • add pre_move_dir and post_move_dir hooks
  • use with VirtualBox environment will require a mu-plugin and a watcher script or similar for VirtualBox based environments
  • update error messaging in delete_temp_backup()

2.2.0 / 2022-05-11

  • add initial setup of weekly wp_delete_temp_updater_backups cron task, oops

2.1.2 / 2022-05-11

  • fix shutdown hook in wp_delete_all_temp_backups() for plugin namespace, not for PR

2.1.1 / 2022-05-11

  • update testing workflows
  • fix action hook wp_delete_temp_updater_backups for plugin namespace, not for PR

2.1.0 / 2202-04-12

  • pass basename of destination to copy_dir( $skip_list ) to avoid potential endless looping.

2.0.0 / 2022-04-06

  • refactor to ease PR back into core by separating out changes into respective files/classes

1.5.0 / 2022-04-04

  • remove anonymous callbacks
  • add class $options for callback functions
  • update is_virtualbox() for testing
  • add testing scaffold

1.4.0 / 2022-04-03

  • move kill switch to WP6.1-beta1
  • add non-direct filesystem rename variants to move_dir()
  • bring into alignment with PR

1.3.6 / 2022-03-31

  • update credit

1.3.5 / 2022-03-31

  • add more Site Health info for runtime environment
  • update move_dir()
  • add is_virtualbox()
  • remove WP_RUNTIME_ENVIRONMENT and wp_get_runtime_environment()

1.3.4 / 2022-03-21

  • run restore_temp_backup() in shutdown hook

1.3.3 / 2022-03-18

  • add wp_get_runtime_environment() to return value of constant WP_RUNTIME_ENVIRONMENT
  • allowed values are obviously up for discussion
  • update to most of current PR

1.3.2 / 2022-02-15

  • update to correspond to core patch

1.3.1 / 2022-01-19

  • add logo credit, Logo from a meme generator. Original artwork by Allie Brosh.
  • remove (int) casting for disk_free_space()

1.3.0 / 2021-01-12

  • introduce is_virtual_box() to get whether running in VirtualBox, requires define( 'ENV_VB', true ) or genenv( 'WP_ENV_VB' ) evaluating to true
  • skips rename() as VirtualBox gets borked when using rename()

1.2.0 / 2021-12-17

  • updated for more parity with planned code
  • updated version check for revert
  • update to use move_dir() instead of $wp_filesystem->move()

1.1.3 / 2021-09-17

  • update version check

1.1.1 / 2021-09-07

  • update check for disk_free_space()

1.1.0 / 2021-09-01

  • automatically deactivate plugin after feature committed to core, currently set to 5.9-beta1
  • check for disabled function disk_free_space() and degrade gracefully

1.0.0 / 2021-08-30

  • updated to be on par with PR #1492, thanks @aristah
  • original zip rollback is now branch zip-rollback

0.5.3 / 2021-07-01

  • add @10up GitHub Actions integration for WordPress SVN

0.5.2 / 2021-06-10

  • exit early if $hook_extra is empty

0.5.1 / 2021-03-15

  • update error message for installation not update

0.5.0 / 2021-02-10

  • initial commit
  • use simpler hook for extract_rollback
  • update for upgrader_install_package_result filter and parameters passed
  • add text domain
  • update error message display
  • added filter rollback_update_testing to simulate a failure.
  • override filter if there’s already a WP_Error

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Support

Issues resolved in last two months:

3 out of 4

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