• scissors
    March 26th, 2009HARTHmmmm Things, Quickies

    Have you been receiving this error message?

    Downloading update from wordpress.org/extend/some-plugin.zip
    Download failed.: name lookup timed out
    Installation Failed

    Ever since I upgraded all my blogs to WordPress 2.7.1 .. I have been getting this error message. I was seeing it sometimes on a few 2.6+ upgrades except the error message said:

    Downloading update from wordpress.org/extend/some-plugin.zip
    Download failed.: Could not create Temporary file
    Installation Failed

    This also occurs when I was searching for NEW plugins with the new Plugin Browser/Installer functionality. What I have been doing since 2.7.1 is just keeping all the plugins current on my hard drive in a folder called .. c:\2009-latest-wordpress\wp-content\plugins\ and using FTP to just upgrade all the various blogs that I have. I suppose you can still do it this way, but it’s nice to be able to upgrade from within your wordpress without an FTP program.

    You can really get frustrated trying to find the solution in the wordpress forums because the moderators really suck in their ability to communicate with people who are really having problems – not too mention you are lucky if you can even find a solution from a moderator because they are so under-manned….

    But – I did find one possible solution

    wordpress.org/support/topic/225437?replies=10
    – venik4 –

    WP 2.7 has a bug that has to do with DNS name resolution. As a workaround, add the following to your local /etc/hosts:

    72.233.56.139 downloads.wordpress.org

    Unfortunately for me – I personally tried to add this to my local /etc/hosts file and this did NOT work for me. So, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

    However … this did work for me – and I am using Firefox:

    Top Menu
    – TOOLS
    — OPTIONS
    — PRIVACY
    —- EXCEPTIONS (where you allow cookies)
    And I added this line in the field:
    downloads.wordpress.org
    —- Click Allow

    I am now able to automatically upgrade my plugins and older versions of WordPress and this worked as a fix for me. I would normally add a disclaimer like “I hope this doesn’t screw anything up for me” but, it’s just too annoying NOT to be able to upload and upgrade plugins at will – so I don’t care.

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