Alma Linux – Safe Upgrade Steps

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🔹 My suggestion for your box

Since you’re running

  • WordPress (PHP + MySQL stack)
  • Matomo (PHP, cron jobs)
  • Headless React (node build, static served)

👉 Do:

  • apt update && apt list –upgradable

  • Dry-run with apt upgrade –simulate

  • If it looks mostly like libs, system utilities, OpenSSL, curl, etc. → go ahead.

  • If it lists PHP or MySQL, decide whether to:

    • Upgrade but keep your configs (press No if it asks about replacing them)
    • Or hold them back with apt-mark hold until you’re ready to test.

What APT upgrade can break

  • Stays within your current Ubuntu release (24.04 “Noble”).
  • Pulls in security patches and bug fixes for installed packages.
  • Won’t upgrade to new major versions (no PHP 8.3 → 8.4 jumps, no MySQL 8.0 → 9.0 jumps).
  • Usually safe, especially on LTS.

🔹 When Things Break

  • If you’ve customized configs (Apache/Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL) and an update asks whether to replace a config file.

    • If you press Yes, you may overwrite your tuned settings.
    • If you press No, you keep your configs but still get patched binaries. (This is what I recommend.)

  • If you’re running against edge cases (e.g. pinned PHP extensions, custom modules, or non-repo builds).

  • If a package maintainer changes a default behavior in an update (rare, but possible).

🔹 How to make it safe

  1. Preview first
apt list --upgradable

This shows you exactly what would change.

  1. Do a dry-run (simulate without applying):
sudo apt upgrade --simulate
  1. Hold back risky packages

If you see something scary like php8.3-fpm or mysql-server, you can pin it:

sudo apt-mark hold php8.3-fpm mysql-server
  1. Then run sudo apt upgrade — everything else updates.
  1. Backups before big moves
  • Database: mysqldump -u root -p –all-databases > all_dbs.sql
  • Web root configs: tar czf www-backup.tar.gz /var/www/html
  • Nginx/Apache configs: tar czf etc-backup.tar.gz /etc/nginx /etc/apache
  1. Apply the updates
sudo apt upgrade

🔹 Post Updates

  1. Restart web stack cleanly

    Just to settle deferred changes:

sudo systemctl restart apache2
sudo systemctl restart mysql
sudo systemctl restart php8.3-fpm
  1. (If you’re not actually using FPM with Apache, that last one is optional.)
  2. Check status

  1. All should show active (running).

  2. Quick test

    • Open your WordPress site.
    • Open Matomo.
    • Make sure PHP pages are loading.

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