Overview
This article provides information to help you prepare your site for the Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS (aka Noble) upgrade.
What to expect
DreamHost will contact you via email in advance of the upgrade.
- The timing ensures that several highly trained engineers are on hand if any major issues arise.
- The upgrade itself should take no longer than an hour to complete.
- Services that rely on your MySQL server (such as WordPress or other database-driven websites) will not be reachable until the upgrade is complete.
- This will NOT affect cloud or email services.
Dedicated Server customizations
Any custom changes to the server made by the admin user will be overwritten after an OS upgrade.
Since the Dedicated Server is managed by DreamHost, this can also happen when adding hosting to a domain or adding an SSL certificate because a server config is run when these types of services are added.
Make sure to document any custom changes so you can quickly restore anything that was overwritten.
Checking software versions on your server
See the following article for instructions on how to check the versions of installed software on your server.
Troubleshooting
The following provides further information on how to troubleshoot a few known issues.
aws-cli
The aws-cli package is not included by default in Ubuntu Noble. If your server was recently upgraded, you will need to manually configure it using a Python virtual environment, as described in this article.
Node.js/PM2
If your Node.js project uses the PM2 process manager, it is recommended that you recompile after the OS upgrade to prevent dependency errors. This ensures everything is linked properly and is compatible with the new libraries on the server.
To recompile, it's recommended that you reinstall Node.js, npm, and PM2. See the following articles for steps on reinstalling:
Python virtualenv
If your website is using a Python virtual environment and you notice any errors after the upgrade, reinstall your virtual environment and all modules. This helps to ensure everything is compatible with the new libraries on the server.
ssh-rsa
The ssh-rsa key cipher is no longer allowed. You will need to regenerate your ssh key if you are using ssh-rsa. Please see the following guides for instructions on how to create new key pairs:
sqlite
Ubuntu Noble will no longer provide support for SQLite version 2. You will need to update any references from SQLite version 2 to SQLite version 3.
Contacting support
If you have any questions or concerns, please Contact Support.