Upgrade and Downgrade Blockers

For cPanel & WHM 11.32, 11.34, 11.36, and 11.38

Introduction to Blockers

In 11.30, cPanel & WHM introduced the concept of "blockers." Blockers are checks that are performed before a version change takes place. These checks review your system for possible compatibility issues with the desired upgrade.

If you wish to upgrade from an older version of cPanel & WHM, you will need to upgrade to every major release before you reach your desired version. For example, if you currently use 11.28 and you wish to upgrade to 11.32, you must first upgrade to 11.30, and then upgrade to 11.32. You cannot skip major releases. As a result, you may experience several blockers as you upgrade to newer versions of cPanel & WHM.

Warning: As of cPanel & WHM 11.34, once you upgrade to a new major version of cPanel & WHM, you will not be able to downgrade to a previous major version of cPanel & WHM.

Standard Checks

Regardless of what version you run, there are standard checks that are always performed when updatenow runs. The list of checks increases with every new version of cPanel & WHM.

Checks for license files

In 11.30, cPanel & WHM introduced a check for license files.

You will not unable to upgrade or downgrade your cPanel & WHM version if:

• A cPanel & WHM license file cannot be found. In this case, the cPanel & WHM software suite will not function properly. All updates will be blocked. You must purchase a valid license in order to upgrade, downgrade, or use cPanel & WHM.
• We are unable to read your cPanel & WHM license file. To fix this issue, you can run the /usr/local/cpanel/cpkeyclt script. If the problem persists, please contact our support staff.
• Your server's license is no longer eligible for updates.

If you experience other difficulties with your license, you should contact our customer service department.

Checks for read-only file systems

A check to verify if file systems are read-only was introduced in 11.36. In order to assure that files can be written to critical directories, updatenow will verify that the file system has not become read-only or full.

updatenow will check the directories below to make sure they are writable. If they cannot be written to, then a version change will not take place.

• /etc
• /var
• /var/lib/rpm
• /var/cpanel
• /usr/local
• /usr/local/cpanel
• /usr/local/bin
• /usr/bin
• /tmp
• /var/tmp

RPM database integrity

A check in relation to the RPM database was introduced in 11.36. In order to verify the integrity of an RPM database, a test RPM will be installed and uninstalled. If a problem is detected, an attempt will be made to repair it. If the RPM database cannot be repaired, a version change will not be allowed.

Upgrade from 11.30 to 11.32

You will be unable to upgrade from cPanel & WHM version 11.30 to 11.32 if:

• The /var/cpanel/sysinfo.config file is empty or does not exist. cPanel & WHM automatically attempts to run /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/gensysinfo to generate this file during the upgrade procedure. If you encounter this error, examine /var/cpanel/sysinfo.config and run /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/gensysinfo manually. When you examine /var/cpanel/sysinfo.config, you should look for and correct file permission problems or similar issues that would prevent the root user from writing to the file. If the problem persists, please contact our support staff.
• Your system still uses the mbox mail storage system. To upgrade to 11.32, you will need to convert your mail storage system to maildir.
• Exim is older than 4.70. cPanel & WHM version 11.32 requires Exim 4.77. To install Exim 4.77, you must enable Exim updates. You can do this on the WHM Update Preferences screen, under cPanel Package Updates.
• Your system runs FreeBSD. cPanel & WHM 11.32 and later versions do not support FreeBSD. If you intend to keep using FreeBSD, navigate to WHM's Update Preferences screen and change your Release Tier to Long-term support, selecting 11.30 from the menu. For more information, please review our Long-Term Support documentation.
• Your Linux distribution is no longer supported after 11.30. If you intend to keep using this version of Linux, navigate to WHM's Update Preferences screen and change your Release Tier to Long-term support, selecting 11.30 from the menu. For more information, please review our Long-Term Support documentation.

If you wish to upgrade from an older version of cPanel & WHM, you will need to upgrade to every major release. For example, if you currently operate on 11.28 and you wish to upgrade to 11.32, you must first upgrade to 11.30, and then upgrade to 11.32. You cannot skip major releases.

Downgrade from 11.32 to 11.30

You cannot downgrade from cPanel & WHM 11.32 to 11.30 if:

• You use the MyDNS nameserver software. If you wish to downgrade, you can use WHM's Nameserver Selection feature to switch to BIND or NSD. Then, you may attempt to downgrade again.
• The system uses a MySQL version higher than 5.1. MySQL 5.5 is not supported in cPanel & WHM version 11.30. There is no supported procedure to downgrade MySQL.

Note: Downgrades from cPanel & WHM version 11.32 to versions older than 11.30 are not permitted.

Some configuration options may not let you switch between cPanel & WHM versions 11.32 and 11.34.

Downgrade from 11.36

In cPanel & WHM 11.36, Perl and many third-party applications supplied with the product will now be installed from RPMs. Since this is a significant architectural change within the product, the ability to downgrade, once 11.36 is installed, has been removed.

Upgrade to 11.36

Note: Once you have upgraded to 11.36, you will not be able to downgrade to a previous version.

To upgrade from cPanel & WHM version 11.34 to 11.36, make sure that:

• You operate under a CentOS, RedHat, or Cloud Linux system, versions 5 or 6.
• You have 1.6GB of free disk space in /usr/local/cpanel
• SYSUP is not disabled.
• Updates for the following are not disabled. To change settings, you can use the Update Preferences feature in WHM or directly edit /etc/cpupdate.conf and change these settings to inherit
  • MySQL
  • Courier
  • Dovecot
  • FTP
  • NSD
  • MYDNS
  • Exim
  • bandmin
  • Python

New requirements for disk space on all cPanel version changes, including new installs

New to 11.36, when the upcp script needs to upgrade to a new version, upcp will stage necessary new files to download locally before upcp overwrites any existing files. This practice helps to ensure that a partial update does not break your current install. As a result of this stage/commit procedure, we require 1.6GB of disk space for /usr/local/cpanel before we allow an upgrade, update, or new install to begin.

Note: While cPanel & WHM checks /usr/local/cpanel some legacy RPMs (like exim or MySQL) will continue to install outside that space. We do not check for sufficient disk space in /usr if that is a different partition.

Upgrading with EXIMUP set to never

You will not be able to upgrade to cPanel & WHM version 11.36 if EXIMUP is set to never in your configuration.

To upgrade on cPanel & WHM 11.34 and earlier:

1. Touch the file /var/cpanel/exim.unmanaged file.
2. Run the upgrade again.

To upgrade from earlier cPanel & WHM 11.36 versions:

1. Run the following command:
   • /scripts/update_local_rpm_versions --edit target_settings.exim unmanaged
2. Run the upgrade again.

Note: When you upgrade to cPanel & WHM 11.36, your Exim configuration may be rebuilt. Check and adjust your Exim configuration accordingly after you upgrade.

Upgrade to 11.38

If Interchange is enabled on your cPanel & WHM 11.36 installation, you will not be able to upgrade to cPanel & WHM version 11.38.