Keeping NovaPanel updated
How panel updates work, what installs itself and what waits for you, and how to turn automatic security updates off.
NovaPanel updates are separate from your server's operating-system packages. Both are shown on the Updates page, and they behave differently.
What installs itself
| Update | Automatic? |
|---|---|
| NovaPanel security releases | Yes, from 1.8.5 onwards |
| NovaPanel ordinary releases | No — press Update Now |
| Operating-system security patches | Yes — Ubuntu's own unattended-upgrades, enabled at install |
| Other operating-system packages | No — press Apply All |
Automatic security updates
From 1.8.5, a panel installs a release by itself in one situation only: when the version it is running is older than the release that fixed a published security vulnerability. Everything else waits for you.
This exists because it had to. Before it, every fix waited for somebody to notice a notification and press a button, and in practice a good number of servers stayed months behind on releases that closed remote-code-execution flaws — flaws reachable by anyone, on servers hosting other people's websites.
When one applies you will see a notification saying so, and the panel restarts once. It takes a few seconds. Sites, databases, mail and DNS are not touched — only the panel binary is replaced.
If an update fails
The previous version is put back automatically. The panel waits for the new binary to start, and if it does not, restores the one that was working and restarts it. You get a notification saying the update failed, and your server keeps running on the version it had.
Turning it off
Updates → Automatic security updates. It is on by default and can only be changed by a full administrator, because leaving a server on a version with a published vulnerability affects every account hosted on it, not just the person changing the setting.
If you turn it off, security releases behave like any other: a notification, and a button to press. Nothing installs itself.
Updating manually
From the panel, Updates → Update Now. From a shell on the server:
nova updateBoth do the same thing, including the roll-back-on-failure behaviour above.
Notices
NovaPanel can also send a notice into your panel — a security advisory, or something else worth knowing about the software. These appear alongside your other notifications. They are read-only messages: nothing that arrives this way can change your server.