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cPanel elevate documentation
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Welcome to the cPanel ELevate Project!

Read more from the Elevate website.

Goal

The cPanel ELevate Project provides a script to upgrade an existing cPanel & WHM RHEL 7 based server installation to a RHEL 8 based installation.

For example:

  1. CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 8
  2. CloudLinux 7 to CloudLinux 8

Intro video to Elevate

Disclaimer

We do not guarantee the functionality of software in this repository. You assume all risk for use of any software that you install from this repository. Installation of this software could cause significant functionality failures, even for experienced administrators.

That said, cPanel Technical Support is ready to help! Please contact cPanel Technical Support if you encounter problems.

Introduction

This project builds on the Alma Linux ELevate project, which leans heavily on the LEAPP Project created for in-place upgrades of RedHat-based systems.

The Alma Linux ELevate project is very effective at upgrading the distro packages. However, if you attempt use it directly on a RHEL 7-based cPanel install, you will end up with a broken system.

This project was designed to be a wrapper around the Alma Linux ELevate project to allow you to successfully upgrade a cPanel install with an aim to minimize outages.

Our current approach can be summarized as:

  1. Check for blockers
  2. yum update && reboot
  3. Analyze and remove software (not data) commonly installed on a cPanel system
  4. Execute AlmaLinux upgrade
  5. Re-install previously removed software detected prior to upgrade. This might include:
  • cPanel (upcp)
  • EA4
  • MySQL variants
  • Distro Perl/PECL binary re-installs
  1. Final reboot (assure all services are running on new binaries)

Risks

As always, upgrades can lead to data loss or behavior changes that may leave you with a broken system.

Failure states include but are not limited to:

  • Failure to upgrade the kernel due to custom drivers
  • Incomplete upgrade of software because this code base is not aware of it.

We recommend you back up (and ideally snapshot) your system so it can be easily restored before continuing.

This upgrade will potentially take 30-90 minutes to upgrade all of the software. During most of this time, the server will be degraded and non-functional. We attempt to disable most of the software so that external systems will re-try later rather than fail in an unexpected way. However there are small windows where the unexpected failures leading to some data loss may occur.

Before updating

Before updating, please check that you met all the pre requirements:

  • You will need some kind of interactive shell access as the root user.
    • Having more than one form available is strongly recommended, in case a problem during the upgrade prevents use of the primary access method.
    • Examples of acceptable forms of access include:
      • root SSH access to the system itself,
      • direct physical console access,
      • IPMI remote console access,
      • access to the virtual console through the hypervisor, or
      • use of a custom system which is based on one of these methods and is made available by your server provider.
  • You should back up your server before attempting this upgrade. The upgrade process tries to detect conditions which will result in a broken system should the process proceed, but this is not perfect.
    • We strongly recommend that this backup take the form of a whole-system image or snapshot.
      • Recovery in this case consists of reloading the system from that image or snapshot.
    • Backups only in the form of individual cPanel accounts will protect data managed by cPanel. These backups will not protect programs or data not managed by cPanel or allow you to minimize downtime in case of catastrophic failure which results from the upgrade process. The cPanel Backup system backs up individual cPanel accounts.
      • Recovery in this case consists of wiping the existing system, installing the target operating system, installing cPanel on the new operating system, rebuilding all system customizations in a way that is compatible with the new operating system, and restoring the cPanel accounts from the backup.
      • If individual cPanel account backups are your only backup option, and uptime is a critical consideration, we recommend performing a migration to a new system using the Transfer Tool instead of upgrading in-place using ELevate, as this will give you more control over the transition in the event of a failure.
    • If you do not know how much of your system your backup service covers, contact the provider of that service for further information.
  • Ensure your server is up to date: yum update
  • Ensure you are using the last stable version of cPanel & WHM.
  • Use a version of MySQL/MariaDB compliant with the target distribution.
  • Write down the information needed to open a support request with cPanel in case of issues during the upgrade process, since this informaton may become unavailable from the system itself.

Additional checks can be performed by downloading the script and then running pre-checks.

Some of the problems you might find include:

  • x86_64 RPMs not in the primary CentOS repos are upgraded.
    • rpm -qa|grep el7
  • EA4 RPMs are incorrect
    • EA4 provides different dependencies and linkage on C7/A8 and CL7/CL8
  • cPanel binaries (cpanelsync) are invalid.
  • 3rdparty repo packages are not upgraded (imunify 360, epel, …).
  • Manually installed Perl XS (arch) CPAN installs invalid.
  • Manually installed PECL need re-build.
  • Cpanel::CachedCommand is wrong.
  • Cpanel::OS distro setting is wrong.
  • MySQL might now not be upgradable (MySQL versions < 8.0 are not normally present on A8).
  • The nobody user does not switch from UID 99 to UID 65534 even after upgrading to A8.
  • The cPanel CCS service may not start.

Using the script

Download the elevate-cpanel script

  • You can download a copy of the script to run on your cPanel server via:
wget -O /scripts/elevate-cpanel \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cpanel/elevate/release/elevate-cpanel ;
chmod 700 /scripts/elevate-cpanel

Pre-upgrade checks

We recommend you check for known blockers before you upgrade. The check is designed to not make any changes to your system.

You can check if your system is ready to upgrade by running:

# Check upgrade (dry run mode)
/scripts/elevate-cpanel --check

To upgrade

Once you have a backup of your server (The cPanel elevate script does not back up before upgrading), and have cleared upgrade blockers with Pre-upgrade checks, you can begin the migration.

NOTE This upgrade could take over 30 minutes. Be sure your users are aware that your server may be down and unreachable during this time.

You can upgrade by running:

/scripts/elevate-cpanel --start

Command line options

# Read the help (and risks mentionned in this documentation)
/scripts/elevate-cpanel --help

# Check if your server is ready for elevation (dry run mode)
/scripts/elevate-cpanel --check

# Start the migration
/scripts/elevate-cpanel --start

... # expect multiple reboots (~30 min)

# Check the current status
/scripts/elevate-cpanel --status

# Monitor the elevation log
/scripts/elevate-cpanel --log

# In case of errors, once fixed you can continue the migration process
/scripts/elevate-cpanel --continue

Summary of upgrade process

The elevate process is divided in multiple stages. Each stage is repsonsible for one part of the upgrade. Between each stage a reboot is performed before doing a final reboot at the very end.

Stage 1

Start the elevation process by installing the elevate-cpanel service responsible for the multiple reboots.

Stage 2

Update the current distro packages. Disable cPanel services and setup motd.

Stage 3

Setup the elevate repo and install leapp packages. Prepare the cPanel packages for the update.

Remove some known conflicting packages and backup some existing configurations. (these packages will be reinstalled druing the next stage).

Provide answers to a few leapp questions.

Attempt to perform the leapp upgrade.

In case of failure you probably want to reply to a few extra questions or remove some conflicting packages.

Stage 4

At this stage we should now run an RHEL 8 based distro. Update cPanel product for the new distro.

Restore removed packages during the previous stage.

Stage 5

This is the final stage of the upgrade process. Perform some sanity checks and cleanup. Remove the elevate-cpanel service used during the upgrade process.

A final reboot is performed at the end of this stage.

Advanced Options

Using an alternative tool to upgrade your distro

By default, the elevate script runs the leapp process to upgrade you from 7 to 8. Leapp may not be compatible with your system.

Using the --upgrade-distro-manually option gives you a way to do the actual distro upgrade in your own way. This, for instance, can be used to allow Virtuozzo systems to upgrade cPanel systems, which are not supported by Leapp.

A --upgrade-distro-manually upgrade would look like:

  1. User runs /scripts/elevate-cpanel --start --upgrade-distro-manually which starts the upgrade process.
  2. elevate-cpanel does all preparatory steps to upgrade the system prior to the distro upgrade.
  3. Elevate will then create the file /waiting_for_distro_upgrade to indicate that the operating system is ready for an upgrade.
    • This is when you would use your distro upgrade tool.
    • When you have completed upgrading your system to 8, simply remove /waiting_for_distro_upgrade and reboot the system into normal multi-user mode.
  4. Elevate will resume upon reboot and complete the upgrade just like it would have without --upgrade-distro-manually

Using the LEAPP_OVL_SIZE environment variable

By default, the elevate script will set this variable to 3000 before beginning the leapp process. However, if you set this environment variable before calling the elevate script, the elevate script will honor the environment variable and pass it through to the leapp process.

NOTE For more information on what this environment variable is used for, please review the leapp documentation for it

FAQ

How to check the current status?

You can check the current status of the elevation process by running:

/scripts/elevate-cpanel --status

Where are the current stage and status stored?

They are stored in the JSON file /var/cpanel/elevate as values for the stage_number and status keys.

During execution stage_number will be set to 1 through 5. Upon completion the stage_number will be set to 6.

The possible values for status are:

  • running
  • paused
  • success
  • failed

How to check elevate log?

The main log from the /scripts/elevate-cpanel can be read by running:

/scripts/elevate-cpanel --log

Where to find leapp issues?

If you need more details why the leapp process failed you can access logs at:

        /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt
        /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.json

How to continue the elevation process?

After addressing the reported issues, you can continue an existing elevation process by running:

/scripts/elevate-cpanel --continue

The elevate process is locked on stage 1

If you notice that the elevate process is locked on stage 1 and you are looping on the advice:

You can consider running:
   /scripts/elevate-cpanel --start

You can unlock the situation by using the --clean option.

# clean the previous state (do not run when an elevation process passed stage 2 or more)
   /scripts/elevate-cpanel --clean

# then restart the process
   /scripts/elevate-cpanel --start

The CCS service will not start after elevate succeeds

This can sometimes occur due to a failed schema update. When this occurs, we recommend that you complete the following steps:

  1. Remove the CCS package(s),
  2. Remove the home directory for the packages user,
  3. Reinstall the package,
  4. Finally, ensure that the task queue completes before continuing

NOTE: Only remove/install cpanel-z-push if it was installed prior to running elevate / is currently installed. You can check if it is installed with the following command:

rpm -q cpanel-z-push
  1. Remove the package(s)
dnf -y remove cpanel-ccs-calendarserver cpanel-z-push
  1. Remove the cpanel-ccs user’s home directory
rm -rf /opt/cpanel-ccs/
  1. Install the package(s)
dnf -y install cpanel-ccs-calendarserver cpanel-z-push
  1. Clear the queueprocd task queue
/usr/local/cpanel/bin/servers_queue run
  1. Verify that the cpanel-ccs service is running
/scripts/restartsrv_cpanel_ccs --status

The output should be similar to the following if the service is up:

cpanel-ccs (CalendarServer 9.3+fbd0e11675cc0f64a425581b5c8398cc1e09cb6a [Combined] ) is running as cpanel-ccs with PID 1865839 (systemd+/proc check method)
  1. Import the CCS data

The CCS data failed to import during elevate

This data is exported to /var/cpanel/elevate_ccs_export/.

Executing the following Perl one-liner as root will import the data for each user:

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/perl -MCpanel::Config::Users -e 'require "/var/cpanel/perl5/lib/CCSHooks.pm"; my @users = Cpanel::Config::Users::getcpusers(); foreach my $user (@users) { my $import_data = { user => $user, extract_dir => "/var/cpanel/elevate_ccs_export/$user", }; CCSHooks::pkgacct_restore( undef, $import_data ); }'

To import a single user, use the following one-liner instead:

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/perl -e 'require "/var/cpanel/perl5/lib/CCSHooks.pm"; my $import_data = { user => "CPTEST", extract_dir => "/var/cpanel/elevate_ccs_export/CPTEST", }; CCSHooks::pkgacct_restore( undef, $import_data );'

NOTE: The above example uses cptest as the user. Replace cptest with the appropriate username for the user that you wish to import.

I need more help?

You can report an issue to cPanel Technical Support.

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