WHM/cPanel

upcp is a script that cPanel uses to automatically update cPanel software.  Generally, this script is scheduled to run once a day as a cron job, and once the update task is completed, crontab will automatically send an notification email to administrator or webmaster.

However, sometimes, you may receive following error message instead:

cPanel Update (upcp) is already running. Please wait for the previous upcp to complete, or kill off all upcp processes and try again. You may wish to use ‘–force’ at /scripts/upcp line 48.

OR

cPanel Update (upcp) is already running. Please wait for the previous upcp to complete, or kill off all upcp processes and try again. You may wish to use ‘–force’

OR

The error message above may also appear when users try to update cPanel software manually by clicking on “Update Server
Software” link under “Software” section in cPanel WebHost Manager (WHM).

It may be due to another process is currently still running upcp script. To solve the problem, simply kill and terminate any unterminated or defunct upcp process.

To kill upcp running process, use the following command to determine the process ID (pid) of the upcp process:

ps aux | grep upcp

You should see a number which represent the pid for upcp in the front (normally second) column. Assuming it’s 11111, then use the following command to send the kill term signal to close upcp task.

kill -9 11111

Replace the ‘11111′ with the pid for upcp. Sometimes, upcp appears defunct, and cannot be killed. In this case, try to kill the crond daemon process.

Determine which pid is the crond with this command:

ps aux | grep crond

Note: In some system, you may have to use CROND (capital) instead of crond.

Then kill the running process with the same command:

kill -9 <pid>

After killing crond process, you will have to start crond daemon again using following command:

service crond start

You may try running upcp once again after completion of above procedure.