Why is the 'Gutenberg' Plugin generating an 'Inconsistent File Permissions' error when other Plugins, with the same permissions, do not?

Question

Earlier, I logged into a WordPress Dashboard I manage and saw that WordPress' 'Gutenberg' Plugin required updating along with a couple of other Plugins.

All Plugins updated fine, with the exception of the 'Gutenberg' Plugin. The error message, that was produced, was ...

An error occurred while updating Gutenberg: The update cannot be installed because we will be unable to copy some files. This is usually due to inconsistent file permissions.

The error message was then appended with a list of Directories, which were affected by the inconsistent file permissions.

As such, I accessed the Web Files, via FTP as to check the File Permissions. I noticed that the File Permissions for all Plugin Folders was set to 755 while all Plugin Files was set to 644.

With this in mind, is anyone able to highlight why I could be having issues with the 'Gutenberg' Plugin, since it's Folder and File permissions are set to the same as the other Plugins; which are being updated with no problems.

Answer 1

If you originally installed via FTP/Cpanel/CLI the directory and files may have a different "owner" belonging to "different group" than those installed via Wordpress.

One possible solution: If you have server access try deactivating Guttenberg and rename its plugin directory to something else. Then reinstall the plugin through Wordpress - if this works your Dashboard plugins page will list this plugin twice - activate the one with the newest version number. If this works you can then delete renamed directory and contents.