Unable to update Magento from version 2.1.1 to 2.1.2 due to "We cannot retrieve information on magento/product-community-edition."

[frostshoxx]

Preconditions

1. Magento version 2.1.1
2. PHP 7.0.11
3. MySQL 5.6

Steps to reproduce

1. Login as an admin
2. Go to Web install
3. Go to Update

Expected result

1. I expect to see the page that will do the check before update

Actual result

1. On the first page of system upgrade, it just showed me this text in red "We cannot retrieve information on magento/product-community-edition."

[shanevbg]

Don't know if you can use the command line, but these are the steps I take for a upgrade (other guides seem to miss some points). Maybe if you can do try this, you might get a more coherent error message.
Good Luck!

[First command is because Magento overwrites my .htaccess and I have to make sure the settings are correct after]

DO A BACKUP!!!

cp .htaccess htaccess.sav
sudo -H -u www-data bin/magento maintenance:enable
sudo -H -u www-data composer require magento/product-community-edition 2.1.2 --no-update
sudo -H -u www-data composer update
chmod +x /bin/magento
rm -rf var/cache/* var/page_cache/* var/generation/*
sudo -H -u www-data bin/magento setup:upgrade
sudo -H -u www-data bin/magento setup:di:compile
sudo -H -u www-data bin/magento setup:cron:run
sudo -H -u www-data bin/magento setup:cron:run
cp .htaccess htaccess.mag
cp htaccess.sav .htaccess
sudo -H -u www-data bin/magento maintenance:disable

[thanasisgalanis]

I had the same issue, for me the problem was in php.ini and especially in parameter
allow_url_fopen=Off magento 2 require it to be ΟΝ.

You will be able to check if this solution is for you, if you try to update magento via composer.

[frostshoxx]

I ended up doing something similar to @shanevbg suggestion. However, the root cause of the issue turned out to be allow_url_fopen is disabled. After enable it, the issue went away. However, the host provider I'm using is strongly against having this parameter enabled. Do we have a workaround or alternative to having to keep allow_url_fopen enabled?

[veloraven]

@frostshoxx thank you for your feedback.
I'm going to close this issue as there is no Magento issue and the GitHub issue tracker is intended for technical issues only. Please refer to the Community Forums or the Magento Stack Exchange site for technical questions.

[frostshoxx]

Thank you, I'll try that. Appreciate the heads up.