LTS autofix

[anton_latvia]

Hello,
Can someone from cPanel give a little bit light on the email "Info You Need + LTS Autofix", that we recently received. I am not sure, but - does it mean, that our very old installations will be automatically upgraded? I mean - auto-MySQL upgrade, automatic EA3 to EA4 conversion? It was not very clear, what all that "auto" was about..

We have several old servers with old EA3 and old PHP for a few customers and therefore are a bit concerned about it. If all this will be auto-upgraded, please explain the option for us to opt-out of this and keep current versions..

Best regards,
Anton.

 

[cPanelLauren]

Hi @anton_latvia

As the email you received indicated, starting the week of November 5th we'll be publishing an autofixer which will automatically attempt to update systems on non-supported versions of cPanel & WHM to the current LTS tier which is cPanel & WHM 78. We are not currently automatically upgrading MySQL or converting EA3 to EA4, but those updates are coming and both are planned for Q1 2020 (prior to the release of Version 86). Please make sure to watch https://cpanel.net/ and follow our Blogs and social media for further updates.

The LTS autofix affects a very small percentage of our license holders and to ensure this process goes smoothly, we are taking the time to address questions and concerns about it on a case-by-case basis in our ticket system. This allows us to take a closer look at your server(s) and advise you of the best path to avoid a negative impact to your cPanel accounts.

Could you please open a support ticket using the link in my signature and share the ticket number once it's opened? I'll add notes to the ticket and ensure it's promptly addressed.

Thank you.

 

[anton_latvia]

Hmm.. I am sorry, this is still unclear. It is unclear, what this autofixer will exactly do, what will happen and when and how we can opt out.
Also it is not clear, what other options we have - we have probably 1 or 2 servers with old EA3 with PHP 5.2 and so far customer is happy and not willing to invest into upgrading their custom built systems, which are mostly intended for internal use anyway.
As I said, it would be good to have more clear overview what will happen and when. So far this sounds spooky and uncertain - we do not want "something to happen automatically" without knowing exactly "what". And after many years with cPanel and hosting in general - my experience shows - automatic or not - there are many, many things that can go wrong for some reason - therefore in our practice, at least what regards to the major updates - we do not like them to happen automatically.

 

[cPanelMichael]

I am not sure, but - does it mean, that our very old installations will be automatically upgraded?

We have several old servers with old EA3 and old PHP for a few customers

Hello @anton_latvia,

I'm happy to provide you with more information.

Can you verify which cPanel & WHM versions are installed on these servers? You can check by running the following command:

cat /usr/local/cpanel/version

Thank you.

 

[anton_latvia]

11.56.0.52 with php 5.3
11.76.0.22 with php 5.2
11.76.0.22 with php 5.4
11.76.0.22 with php 5.5

probably those 2 first servers are the ones, we would have to worry most of all, due to PHP and MySQL version.

 

[cPanelLauren]

Hi @anton_latvia


There are some blockers that are present to move from 56 -> 78 and they are as follows (only including the versions that have blockers):

Version	Upgrade Requirements	Upgrade Blockers
58	Only available for 64-bit Systems	Centos 5, RHEL 5, and CloudLinux 5. 32-bit Systems The perl514 RPM Target is set to installed or unmanaged
60	SNI Support	Apache (httpd) 2.2.11 or older
62	MySQL® Version 5.5 or later	MySQL version 5.1 and earlier
68	LiteSpeed version 5.2.1 or later The ea-apache24-config-runtime package version 1.0.113 or later	LiteSpeed version 5.2.1 build 1 and earlier the ea-apache24-config-runtime package version 1.0-112 and earlier
78	EasyApache 4 LiteSpeed Version 5.3.6 or later	EasyApache 3 LiteSpeed Version 5.3.5 and earlier

What will happen/What to expect at this point:

Present​	Short-Term Future​	Long Term​
The autofix will only attempt to update the server as far as it can before encountering a blocker and a notification will be sent indicating this.​	In Q1 of 2020 (February) this will change and we will be moving servers from EA3->EA4 The autofix will continue to maintain the LTS tier for future LTS releases, such as the next one v86 which is anticipated in March 2020	The removal of blockers on updates to maintain at least LTS on all servers

Suggestions:

• We want to help everyone find the best path for them to maintain a supported version of cPanel and it's why we're encouraging our license holders who will be affected by this to open a ticket so we can assist them with this.
• For PHP version issues, if you need to keep an older PHP version, we're recommending CloudLinux due to their alt-PHP versions.
• For MySQL, EA3->EA4 conversions or any supported service update questions/assistance we're available here, the ticket system and a number of other social media outlets to provide assistance.

 

[anton_latvia]

Thank you for clarification and for the suggestion to build own RPM for PHP - I was not aware of such possibility and will definitely look into that. Although to be very honest - even on CloudLinux we are not alt-php distribution, as we are used to cPanel's native MultiPHP manager and I know - we have range of PHP versions from 5.2 to 7.3. I hope those won't suddenly disappear.

While we use CloudLinux on shared-environment servers, not all VPS owner will agree to pay extra, for the license, but now we will know, what to tell them, thank you.

Regarding MySQL upgrade - while it is quite safe to upgrade from 5.6 to higher versions, upgrades from MySQL 5.5 to 5.6 might bring encoding problems for outdated code. The same with EA3 to EA4 - during past several years we converted many servers - some of them went smoothly, but there were cases, when people had problems - especially with some custom configuration. Honestly guys, this auto-conversion idea... Your support is good, really helpful, but this will still be post-factum fixing. We know there is very high risk of problems - we are happy with how things run - we want an option to keep it that way. To me all this sounds like a nightmare, when suddenly people will start calling on Monday morning complaining about non-working-webserver-while-the-ad-campain-has-just-started.. Do we have any option to skip these updates and stay with the version, that we currently run?

I might have missed a point, what is the reason for LTS versions, if now all old servers are going to be force-upgraded?

P.S Offtopic: AutoFixer sounds like a wrong name. Shouldn't you call it "AutoUpdater"?

 

[cPanelLauren]

Although to be very honest - even on CloudLinux we are not alt-php distribution, as we are used to cPanel's native MultiPHP manager and I know - we have range of PHP versions from 5.2 to 7.3. I hope those won't suddenly disappear.

You can use cPanel's MultiPHP manager with alt-php now

They discuss this in their documentation here: CloudLinux OS components | Documentation

I'm also including a screenshot from my test server so you can see how it's displayed:

Regarding MySQL upgrade - while it is quite safe to upgrade from 5.6 to higher versions, upgrades from MySQL 5.5 to 5.6 might bring encoding problems for outdated code. The same with EA3 to EA4 - during past several years we converted many servers - some of them went smoothly, but there were cases, when people had problems - especially with some custom configuration. Honestly guys, this auto-conversion idea... Your support is good, really helpful, but this will still be post-factum fixing.

Yea, I agree as far as there could be potential issues which is why we're making every effort possible to notify license holders ahead of time. We do acknowledge the potential for this in our correspondence as well. Which is another reason why we're committed to working with everyone to get them the best path to update.

Do we have any option to skip these updates and stay with the version, that we currently run?

I'd suggest opening a ticket to discuss this and paths to updating further.

I might have missed a point, what is the reason for LTS versions, if now all old servers are going to be force-upgraded?

LTS will remain the long term stable version - it will be the last to receive updates and the last to become EoL. The only servers that will be updated are servers running unsupported versions so they were never considered to be a part of the LTS tier.

P.S Offtopic: AutoFixer sounds like a wrong name. Shouldn't you call it "AutoUpdater"?

Technically I can see where you would deduct that but not the case

 

[ffeingol]

One of the the issues with the MySQL 5.5 to 5.6 conversion is passwords. If you start doing the upgrade within WHM (not actually running the upgrade) it will give you warnings for any users that have 'old style' passwords. It's tedious, but an easy problem to solve. You basically have to search through the customers code (i.e. grep) for the user to find the password in their config file. Then you just go into WHM and set the MySQL user's password to that password. That simply causes the password to be re-encrypted with the new encryption scheme. If you don't do that and MySQL is auto-upgraded (and any users have old style passwords) their site will be broken and you'll see unable to connect to MySQL/wrong MySQL password type messages.