The server shows an error "STDERR: JSON::XS object version 4.03 does not match $JSON::XS::VERSION 4.04"

Symptoms

After a recent update, WHM/cPanel may not be accessible, and reviewing your server may show the following error:

STDERR: JSON::XS object version 4.03 does not match $JSON::XS::VERSION 4.04"

Description

When this error occurs, the cPanel/WHM service itself fails to start. This is caused by possibly broken or missing installed packages and dependencies.

We've opened an internal case for our development team to investigate this further. For reference, the case number is CPANEL-49310. Follow this article to receive an email notification when a solution is published in the product. 

Workaround

At this time, we have released an update for EasyApache 4, v25.29, to resolve this issue. This ensures that packages like ea-podmen are fully recompiled with the current cPanel Perl version when it is updated.

If you are still seeing this issue, then follow these steps to make sure everything is fully updated:

/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/check_cpanel_pkgs --fix

Once the above is finished, the following command can be used to restart the cPanel service:

/scripts/restartsrv_cpsrvd