Plugin Installer could leave a warning, if it falls back from direct install to FTP install

[keatch]

Currently using svn version 13573.
When I try to install a plugin via the web interface under Plugins -> Add New, the installation puts me to the credential for the FTP upload?

Are there some new variables that enable / disable this behavior?

Additional information:
Platform Linux
MySQL v5.0
The user is Admin
Language: english

vesion.php
$wp_db_version = 13309;

[TobiasBg]

This means that your server is not configured properly. Most likely, this is due to non-sufficient permissions for file creation/modification/writing (for the PHP user).

If that happens, the plugin installer falls back to the FTP method.

Please ask in the Support Forums for further assistance with the server configuration.

Feel free to re-open this ticket, if there really is a bug or you find out more.

[ocean90]

See ​Codex.

[keatch]

Ok, thanks.
Was a permission mismatch.

Looking if it's possible to leave a warning message, for the user, so it can know why this feature is not working!

Thanks to all for the support!

[TobiasBg]

That makes it an enhancement.
I'm therefore re-opening it, to hear what others are saying.
I also changed the title to be closer to your idea.
And I moved it to 3.1, as it qualifies for feature freeze affected, right?

[keatch]

Yes, thanks. That's right!

Can you point me to the files that is managing the check?
( maybe I think is class-wp-ugrader.php in wp-admin/includes folder )

[dd32]

Can you point me to the files that is managing the check?

get_filesystem_method() in wp-admin/includes/file.php

IMO, falling back to FTP doesnt deserve a warning, Using the FTP method is much more common than one would hope for.

For 99% of users, the automatically chosen method is the only one that can work on their server configuration, most people cant "fix" (remove) the ftp check without changing the server configuration. You had a server-misconfiguration which lead WordPress to fallback to a method it knew would work (as it could see, that doing it the direct way (writing files directly to the hard drive) was going to result in the files being owned by a different user, Therefor, switching to FTP forces the files to be created by the ftp owner, leading to less user problems down the line.

[TobiasBg]

Thanks for the background info, Dion.

I agree that a warning is pretty much useless, as the average user probably has never heard about file permissions or chmod.

Wontfix then?

[dd32]

I agree, I'm going to close this as wontfix.

I do think that some extra documentation could do in the wild, but i dont think this is a place to discuss that, people posting their experiences on their blogs will help those later down the line through google searches :)