Failed to read PID smaps during cPanel nightly update maintenance

Symptoms

After a nightly run of the cPanel upcp cron, you receive emails with warnings similar to:

CONFIG_TEXT: [2026-03-12 00:39:31 -0400] E    [/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/find_outdated_services] STDERR: Failed to read PID 1843109's smaps.
[2026-03-12 00:39:31 -0400] E    [/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/find_outdated_services] Failed to read PID 1845721's smaps.
[2026-03-12 00:39:31 -0400] E    [/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/find_outdated_services] [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/proc/1845734/stat'
...
Cpanel::Exception::ProcessFailed::Error/(XID tvaqhs) “/usr/bin/needs-restarting” reported error code “1” when it ended: Failed to read PID 1843109's smaps.
[2026-03-12 00:39:31 -0400] E    [/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/find_outdated_services] Failed to read PID 1845721's smaps.
[2026-03-12 00:39:31 -0400] E    [/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/find_outdated_services] [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/proc/1845734/stat'

Cause

The nightly upcp cron job runs Security Advisor, the /usr/bin/needs-restarting script is called, but errors occur during the process:

CONFIG_TEXT: Failed to read PID 1845721's smaps.

We've opened an internal case for our development team to investigate this further. For reference, the case number is CPANEL-52003. Follow this article to receive an email notification when a solution is published in the product. 

Resolution

A change was published in cPanel 136.0.4:

• Fixed CPANEL-52003: Fix spurious Failed to read PID smaps emails.

Additional Resources

136 Change Log

How do I update cPanel/WHM?