I got a notification that Web Host Manager/cPanel is in transition to version 11, “the most extensive update ever”. Virtually every section will get an upgrade. This upgrade will be provided in 2 stages to handle the mass. The first stage will contain most of the necessary code and the second stage will provide the smaller, focused updates.

I checked out their version 11 overview pages and was blown away with what I saw. In their schedule I saw that the CURRENT build was launched around the beginning of May, followed by stage 2 EDGE about 2 weeks ago. Around June 5 the RELEASE build stage 1 is expected and then stage 2 CURRENT, RELEASE and STABLE each week after that.

To give you an idea what these “trees/branches” are, I’ll quote the instructions:

Build Types

• EDGE: Edge is the bleeding edge tree. While it has the newest features, it has undergone the least amount of testing (if any). You generally shouldn’t run this build unless you need a bug fix or feature in it. Once an equivalent CURRENT or RELEASE build has been released, you should switch away from this.
• CURRENT: Current builds are more mature than the EDGE builds since they have been tested in a production environment.
• RELEASE: Release builds are the preferred builds to run. They are generally current enough to have the latest bug fixes and new features, but without the worry of new bugs being introduced.
• STABLE: Stable builds are for the conservative people who do not wish to run the latest release.

So last night I decided to tryout the CURRENT build on my hosting server. Since I assumed that this has already been tested, I went ahead and did the upgrade.

cPanel 11 is really as great as they say! I was amazed by the popup that asked if I wanted assistance for setting up my cPanel. It then launched a setup wizard, guiding me through several settings. This wizard is also available as an icon. The theming is awesomely AJAXified! You can select one of several templates for your x3 cPanel theme. The list of great features continues.

Problems

But then my mail client started popping up error messages. It could not connect to the mail server. and I’ve been working like crazy to get it fixed since then until about an hour ago. “Then” was about 24 hours ago.

For some reason mails were blocked. Sender domains could not be verified for outgoing and incoming messages, so they constantly bounced (bouncing is returning a message to the sender with an error message). Messages to other accounts on my server did go through, but where nowhere to be found. The less dark it got outside, the more frustrated I got.

Then, around 10 o’clock, I thought I solved the problem and went to bed. Around noon I got a call asking what’s wrong with the mail server. I sped out of bed, checked out my computer and it was loaded with customers on IM, trying to find answers. I assured them all that I’m researching the matter as we speak.

After trying to figure out the problem for hours, a friend, Guillermo, suggests that I rollback the upgrade. This means that I would install the older build back on the server. I did, and around midnight I, after the downgrade was finished, mail exchange was back to normal. It took me another hour to fix the problem with the mail that was stuck in the mail queue. It finally could be downloaded from mail clients again.

Conclusion

It’s not professional to have your customers stuck from their email communication for a whole day. I now learned to only install STABLE updates, which have been thoroughly tested. Even though you want to give your users the best if it comes to ease of use and security, but sometimes it’s better to wait until the build is stable.