Background updates: Administration blocked

[pavelevap]

A while ago there was background update to 4.2.3 and everything works well. But administration was blocked for users without Administrator capability to update database. Many of our editors could not work until Administrator logged in and updated database. I am not sure if I am missing something or something wrong on our side, but it is a dangerous situation, I guess... Database should be updated automatically in this case of minor update?

[atomicjack]

When your installation updates, it has to also upgrade the database tables, if there were any changes. I am presuming that, for non-administrators, it would skip this step, or not complete it, to prevent database security issues.

However - if your site is updating automatically, then technically, it shouldn't be user-dependent. Can any core committers confirm this?

[dd32]

A database update being required won't block non-administrators access.

However, the 4.2 branch includes a potentially long-running database update (the switch to utf8mb4) which after some bugs were fixed in 4.2.3, may have only just applied to a site. If that update is running in the background process, the WordPress admin may have hit a locked DB temporarily while that update took place.

[pavelevap]

Strange, I found another website with the same problem...

• Automatic background update from 4.2.2 to 4.2.3 was finished.
• I went to website/wp-admin URL.
• I could see page for database update and I could click on it and make database update even if I was not logged in (Anonymous browser window).
• Then I was redirected to login page.

So, anybody who wanted to do something in WP administration had to first update database (not only Administrator). And users were scary and that is why we had many phone calls "What is going on" and "Should I click the button?"