Docker & Wordpress - The uploaded file could not be moved to wp-content/uploads/.../

Question

Error:

The uploaded file could not be moved to wp-content/uploads/.../....

Environment:

Wordpress Docker image is created from a base Wordpress image then the files are mapped in and out, for development:

version: '3'

services:
  wordpress:
    restart: always
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: ...
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: ...
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: ...
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: ...

    image: wordpress:latest
    ports:
      - 38991:80
    volumes:
      - ./:/var/www/html

We talk to a dev database hosted external to the Docker container.

Image is built - and sent up to the server. Then, CMS user attempts to upload an image and the Wordpress build moans that the uploaded file could not be moved to wp-content/uploads/.../.... We don't get this error on localhost.

Could some devops experts kindly point us in the right direction on what needs to be done for this to tally up on the server.

Answer 1

The permissions are incorrect on the wp-content/uploads directory. I had the same error and in my case the upload folder's permissions and user/group where set wrong and also some folders inside were set to root. But that's probably because I imported a backup.

To fix the upload you can add the following two commands to your deploy pipeline/script or use docker exec -it <container-name> bash to perform it manually on the container.

1. Set the correct user/group on the uploads folder: $ chown -R www-data:www-data uploads/*
2. Set the correct permissions: $ chmod 755 uploads/*