Webmasters running WordPress on a UNIX flavor server running Apache2 may have noticed that when you attempt to use the automatic upgrade option on your plugins page of the Dashboard, that you are prompted for a FTP login.

Rather than conjour up a FTP account you can patch one of your WordPress administration files to get the upgrade option to work. The patch suggested by rootninja modifies the function get_filesystem_method() found in wp-admin/includes/file.php by replacing the call to mygetuid() with a call to posix_getuid().

if( ! $method && function_exists(‘getmyuid’) && function_exists(‘fileowner’) ){

…

if ( getmyuid() == fileowner($temp_file_name) )

becomes

if( ! $method && function_exists(‘posix_getuid’) && function_exists(‘fileowner’) ){

…

if ( posix_getuid() == fileowner($temp_file_name) )

Of course, your webserver will need rw permissions to your plugin directory.

Thank you rootninja, I was getting a bit tired of manual installations and I agree, FTP blah.