I am not sure if this was the cause for the failures in UpdatePathTestBase te...

I am not sure if this was the cause for the failures in UpdatePathTestBase tests. I have the commit that reverts this change and still the test fails for me locally. Verbose message for the failures is always this:

In order to run update.php you need to either be logged in as admin or have set $update_free_access in your settings.php.