I would have put this in general but I've done nothing to the configuration except follow instruction.

4GB Ram, 80 storage, more than enough power for a wordpress instance, the only adjustments I've made is give it a tls cert, and whitelisted my IP in fail2ban config

I'm unsure how to troubleshoot this, the only difference I can see is that the installer has changed, fail2bad is there (maybe some other things) but, I can't install plugins, or I can't create the folders to do so, I've checked and checked and destroyed and rebuilt from vanilla builds, there is an issue with this one

permissions are fine. I tried default, I tried to chown them to what they already are, I've tried adjusting

has anyone else seen this ?

apologies if I'm not preparing this question very well

to be clear, no plugins can be installed. the permissions haven't been touched, (well they have to test if it's a permission issue, on images now destroyed)