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You must reboot the server to apply software updates.

Alex Stupar
I am running CentOS 7.4, WHM 66.0.26, without KernelCare and with automatic updates. Last night our server ran autoamtic updates and now in WHM there is this message "You must reboot the server to apply software updates.". The problem is that it's very ugly that we have to reboot the server so often. We already rebooted the server 3 - 4 times in the last 60 days for similar updates. We had CentOS 5 on an old server and we had uptime of over 1400 days. Why is this happening cPanel? Why so many reboots are required?

Comments

10 comments

Date Votes
  • sparek-3
    CentOS 7 just released a new kernel. Any time a new kernel is released and you install it, you have to reboot for that kernel to take affect. Simply installing a new kernel doesn't run your system on that kernel. If the kernel update fixes a security hole, then you are not protected from that security hole until you reboot with the new kernel. Unless... If you use Kernelcare, it takes advantage of a kernel module to write those changes into a running kernel. If you install Kernelcare, then you probably don't ever have to reboot the server for kernel updates. The downside is that Kernelcare is going to take a little bit longer to incorporate security fixes from upstream kernel updates. If you had a CentOS 5 server with a 1400 day uptime, then it was susceptible to various kernel security holes.
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  • Alex Stupar
    Does CentOS 7 / WHM automatic updates install automatically also kernel updates? In this case reboot is understandable. But I think CentOS 7 does only software updates (excluding kernel).
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  • sparek-3
    No clue on that. I don't do any automatic updates. But I would harbor a guess that the kernel on your server was updated and thus necessitating the need for a server reboot. You would need to review the logs to be sure. Or perhaps there's a more colorful cPanel/WHM way of doing this.
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  • Alex Stupar
    I checked and kernel is not updated by automatic updates. So my question is why reboots are required? This is very annoing for a production server.
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  • cPanelMichael
    I checked and kernel is not updated by automatic updates. So my question is why reboots are required? This is very annoing for a production server.

    Hello, The following option is available under the "System" tab in "WHM >> Tweak Settings" if you want to ensure automatic kernel updates are disabled: Enable Linux kernel update during nightly maintenance Per it's description: Each night, WHM updates your system software but does not update the kernel. If you select On, WHM will update the kernel. When you log in, WHM will notify you that your system requires a reboot. Note that outside of automatic updates, your kernel is automatically updated if you run the "yum update" command as well. Keep in mind that reboots are not required for cPanel/WHM to operate, but are highly recommended if you want to make sure your system utilizes the newly published kernel from CentOS. Failure to reboot to enable the new kernel will leave your server vulnerable. I recommend using an application such as KernelCare if you want to avoid reboots while still using updated kernels. Thank you.
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  • vlee
    I was having the same issue after doing a reboot it still came up saying "You must reboot the server to apply software updates" So I did a forced cPanel Update and that resolved my problem and did not come up saying "You must reboot the server to apply software updates"
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  • Alex Stupar
    Thank you for your reply. I've verified the "Enable Linux kernel update during nightly maintenance" setting and the value was and is set to Off, so Linux kernel update was and is not automaticaly updated on this machine. So, basically the server requires reboot without doing a Kernel update, but only doing software update. Why is that? We already rebooted the server 3 - 4 times in the last 60 days for similar small updates and this is already a big problem.
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  • sparek-3
    What does cat /var/log/yum.log | grep kernel show?
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  • Alex Stupar
    Most recent lines are those: Sep 13 23:45:33 Updated: kernel-tools-libs-3.10.0-693.2.2.el7.x86_64 Sep 13 23:45:56 Updated: kernel-headers-3.10.0-693.2.2.el7.x86_64 Sep 13 23:46:17 Updated: kernel-tools-3.10.0-693.2.2.el7.x86_64 Sep 13 23:46:49 Installed: kernel-devel-3.10.0-693.2.2.el7.x86_64 and latest reboot was required on Oct 23.
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  • Archmactrix
    I got the same notification yesterday when running cPanel update and it appears that the reboot was needed on my machine because of a systemd update. By running the below comand it displayed the reason why the system needed reboot:
    sudo whmapi1 system_needs_reboot
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