Question WordPress Updates Digest out of date by the time I log on

[Gareth Westwood]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS

Plesk version and microupdate number

Version 18.0.56 Update #4, last updated on Nov 8, 2023 06:27 AM

Hi Team,
I regularly get a "WordPress Updates Digest" sent through from my server telling me that various plugins have newer versions available. This morning as an example at 03:43, telling me that Yoast SEO was at 21.6 and that 21.7 is available.

I also think that I have everything set to automatically update because security.

By the time I logged on to my server to check this morning, 5 hours after the email, Yoast has already been updated to 21.7, which is great as it seems to be doing exactly what it should do but...

This means I have something wrong somewhere, I want to receive a notification when something needs manual intervention to resolve. I don't want to log on to the server every other day to confirm it's done what it should, I want it to tell me when something needs my attention.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Kaspar]

This would be expected behaviour. The plugin hadn't been updated at the time the update digest got sent, but some time after it did got updated. This isn't something you can completely avoid. But I can imagine this being somewhat annoying and I think you can reduce the chances of this happening.

If I am not mistaken the update digest gets initiated by the instances-auto-update.php cronjob, which runs daily. You'll have to look at Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks to see when at what time it gets run exactly. The solution (at least I think) would be to setup a cron job for your domain that runs about 10 or 15 minutes earlier which calls the httpdocs/wp-cron.php script of your Wordpress installation. (assuming your WP site is installed in the httpdocs directory). That way your Wordpress site checks for update before the update digest gets run.

 

[Gareth Westwood]

Hey @Kaspar, thanks for your reply.

What you describe sounds about right and I think running the updates before the digest makes sense. I think it's a problem for all of the wordpress instances on my server so would you know if there is a way to update all wordpress instances.

The wp-toolkit "maintenance.php" seems to run at 26 past each hour and the instances-auto-update.php at 03:49.

I would have assumed that the instances-auto-update.php would run the updates... but maybe that's what maintenance does? but then, surely I'm not regularly getting updates that fall in the 23 mins between maintenance and update running?

 

[Kaspar]

I am not sure to be honest what taks are performed with each cronjob from the Wordpress Toolkit. The "maintenance.php" script sounds like it could be related to the update process. But I wouldn't be surprised if the whole update process is handled by the Wordpress installation itself and not by the wp-toolkit. I am actually also not sure how the Wordpress update process works exactly. I assume Wordpress checks for updates and installs these directly too any time the WP cron gets run. But perhaps the update check and the actual installation are two different processes. Meaning that WP cron needs to run twice; one time to check for updates and another to install these updates. Idk.

Anyway since you mentioned your running multiple Wordpress sites on your server you might want to consider enabling the "Take over wp-cron.php" option for each site. This will actually create a cronjob for each installation that runs twice an hour and which calls the WP cron function. The exact time will be different for each installation, so not to "overload" your server. Since this will run WP cron every 30 minutes, the chances of getting an update digest with updates that are already installed by the time you read the update digest should be a lot smaller. You can play around with the exact time each cronjob runs to see what best fits your need to minimize getting the update digest with updates that are already installed.

 

[vbelich]

Hi, thank you for the report.

Bug is confirmed EXTWPTOOLK-11025

WP Toolkit perform an update of WordPress components (core, plugins and themes) during instances-auto-update.php in accordance with chosen auto-update settings (force update / defined individually / etc), but the notification is formed improperly and always contains information about "available update" for plugins and themes.