Okay, so I moved my dashboard site to a new server (SpinupWP on a $5/month Digital Ocean droplet), and by the time I copied the files and database and got it figured out and running, I had 27 updates waiting on the child sites. This time when I clicked Update Everything it continued to update sites for two or three minutes, but then it stopped and I finally clicked Close and found 4 updates remaining, all of which installed quickly on the next go-round. The Chrome console showed this error twice, around the time it hung:
/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php:1 Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 504 ()
So, given this big improvement and what I’ve read about the nature of 504 errors, my conclusion at this point is that there was just too much going on for my VPS to handle with the dashboard and child sites all on the same server.
Bogdan, would you say that the above 504 error from my console log was thrown by the dashboard process, or by the child site(s)? In other words, given that error, would you say that I’m still overloading the VPS with all the updates happening on it, or that I need a larger droplet with a bit more umph for the dashboard site?
I think that your dashboard site server kills the process of executing the admin-ajax.php script (/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php:1 Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 504 ()) probably due to the PHP max execution time or cURL Timeout. The only way to fix this is to reach out to your host support and have them review logs to see which limit hit the maximum so the server killed the process. Once that is found, you can try to increase it. My best guess is PHP Max Extecution or cURL Timeout.
So this is exactly the issue I had when I was troubleshooting and I was able to resolve it by increasing the TimeOut directive in my Apache server configuration since it was set at 60 seconds I increased to 300 seconds. I also made sure my max_execution_time for my PHP setting is set to 300 as well as time curl timeout setting set to same as well. After making sure all three were in line with each other I was able to solve my update issue and now the update status is working now.
Hope this helps you guys troubleshooting the update process hanging issue.
@kayvon Thanks for updating us on your installations status. We would have deffinatly suggested this if we saw your System Reports so great catch!
@johnm can you confirm that all your System Variables are set correctly within your System Report? I know you are having some issues with your admin-ajax timing out.
I think that it’s most likely what @bogdan & @kayvon have suggested.
So, to conclude this thread: After moving the dashboard site to the new server, I started running into some WordPress config issues related to the switch from Apache to Nginx and the fact that I had WP installed in a subdirectory on the domain. Since there’s nothing else on the site I decided to dump the whole thing and start fresh rather than try to figure out how to configure Nginx to work properly with the subdirectory. I’m sure it’s pretty simple and I’ll figure it out one of these days, but now I have a clean fresh install of WordPress and the MainWP dashboard and everything is happy.
Next I spun up a new and bigger server on SpinupWP, moved all my child sites there, and added them back to the new dashboard. By then there were fifteen updates showing in the dashboard, and when I clicked Update All it ran through all of them without an issue.
What I’ve learned from this: Updating takes a lot of horsepower, and if you’re running too many updates at the same time on too small a server, you’re going to have issues. And, if possible, run the dashboard on a different server from the child sites.
FYI, so far I’m really happy with SpinupWP running DigitalOcean droplets, and I have two seperate servers with more combined power than the VPS I had at KnownHost for about the same price. Setting up a site there is super easy, and I was able to move all the sites over with only a few minor issues. Unfortunately one site is stubbornly refusing to be added to the dashboard, but I’ll start a new topic about that.
