cPanel Updates on Redhat 9 Can Break Stuff

If you’ve been running servers for a few years, you probably have at least one server or VPS in your fleet that’s running Redhat 9.  Redhat  9 is old, but it’s stable (probably since there are never any updates for it), and the customers lingering on those servers are usually happy…

…until you run a cPanel update and find that something doesn’t work right. From what I’ve seen, cPanel updates on Redhat 9 servers tend to break either FTP or IMAP, causing Webmail not to work. You may see errors like this:

HORDE: Login failed because your username or password was entered incorrectly.

SquirrelMail: ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server.

RoundCube: Unexpected condition from IMAP server, closed or corrupt connection to IMAP. Possible mailbox corruption.

To resolve this, you need to reinstall the fam package. You can do this by running:

rpm Uvhhttp://archive.download.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/9/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/fam-2.6.8-9.i386.rpm

For FTP, try reinstalling the RPM, or downgrading to the previous version:

???rpm -Uvh http://httpupdate.cpanel.net/ftpinstall/pure-ftpd/redhat/9/pure-ftpd-1.0.27-1.tls.i386.rpm

If that doesn’t work, you can go to http://httpupdate.cpanel.net/ftpinstall/pure-ftpd/redhat/9/ and keep installing the previous version down until you find the one that works on your server.

cPanel Updates on Redhat 9 Can Break Stuff