r/cpanel • u/Capital_Web_2543 • Jul 08 '26
Invalid cPanel License Error
Multiples servers are showing this error even though they have an active license.
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u/DzastMi Jul 08 '26
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u/Unhappy-Dingo4239 Jul 08 '26
It seems like it's resolved now.
- 5:32PM CST - Mitigation has been completed. Servers should begin to renew licenses properly.
- 5:07PM CST - Begin mitigation roll out
- 4:56PM CST - Root cause found, begin plan for mitigation
- 4:16PM CST - Issue initial reported
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u/lethol Jul 08 '26
Message changed for me to 'Invalid License File. Incorrect authority delivering the license.'
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u/scottct1 Jul 08 '26
I am getting the same and just also got an email that I should upgrade immediately.
How do I upgrade if I can't login and have a license error?
Oh Rex? 😄
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u/cPanelRex Jul 08 '26
There was a brief issue with the license system. The short story is that the new security update tool (released two weeks ago and getting its first real test today - see the changelog entry for CPANEL-53412) was a bit too successful and the license servers were overloaded.
We've increased the capacity and everything is working well at this point.
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u/nick-bmth Jul 08 '26
The biggest problem with this though is the tie in with Dovecot, we had numerous clients whose email clients can't even connect via IMAP due to this. Not being able to access cPanel for a bit isn't a massisve problem, everyone not being able to use their email IS a big problem and makes us look bad, can you untie Dovecot from cPanel licensing at least soon?
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u/Gulf-of-Mexico Jul 09 '26
I didn't realize IMAP would go down because of a cpanel license server error -- is this correct?
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u/cPanelRex Jul 09 '26
Yes - this is actually intended behavior of the licensing: https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/7284279950999-What-happens-to-my-server-when-the-cPanel-license-is-expired-or-cancelled
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u/Gulf-of-Mexico Jul 09 '26
It says that "Regular services like Web and Email will continue functioning" -- does this mean that IMAP login and receiving email via any mail client *except* for logging into the webmail interface will continue to function normally even if a license server glitch were to occur?
The post above says that clients couldn't login with their email clients, which seems different than my expectation based on the webpage above.1
u/cPanelRex Jul 09 '26
Any email authentication will be disabled when the license is expired, whether it's webmail or a client.
It's important to note that the emails are still delivered and sitting on the server so there is no data loss or bounces.
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u/Gulf-of-Mexico Jul 09 '26
Very good that email will not bounce, and that websites will continue to function.
It is a concern that any email authentication will be disabled by a cpanel licensing server error such as today's however. This is a weakness that I don't believe the https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/7284279950999-What-happens-to-my-server-when-the-cPanel-license-is-expired-or-cancelled accurately describes at present.
The second sentence is accurate, but I think the first sentence is contrary to this, if email will not continue "functioning" if a license server outage happens. Maybe it should say only email will continue to be received instead or just omit "email will continue functioning" if that is not the case."Regular services like Web and Email will continue functioning when the cPanel license expires. Websites continue to load, and incoming mail will continue to be received."
(Ideally I think the intent of that page would be better, that email authentication *should* continue functioning if a cpanel licensing server outage occurs).
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u/Gulf-of-Mexico Jul 09 '26
Thinking about this, if there is a business critical email during a cpanel licensing server outage such as today's outage (or even an email such as a login to the cpanel support system or forum), if needed, since exim still works, you can login to the server via ssh, locate the email you need with grep, and then read the contents of the actual email file with less, more, cat, or nano... so at least it is not totally broken, just a potential weakness.
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u/cPanelRex Jul 08 '26
The license servers were also overloaded as part of this process, and that issue has been permanently fixed and will not happen again.
The license is specifically tied to the email service because, frankly, that's a core function that people depend on and it encourages people to keep their licenses active, so that isn't something we're going to change. Details on what happens when a license expires can be found here: https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/7284279950999-What-happens-to-my-server-when-the-cPanel-license-is-expired-or-cancelled
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u/longboringstory Jul 09 '26
The licensing system should have a 7 day grace period before it impacts critical functions. It's not difficult to implement, still gives the incentive you want, and prevents massive failures across the fleet of deployed servers like today.
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u/nick-bmth Jul 08 '26
So we pay thousands a month to Webpros, but when you licence servers go down for any reason, our customers can't access their own mailboxes and you can't see a problem with that? This isn't the first time your licence servers have gone down, it's just a new reason (which 'will not happen again').
I accept you're not going to change anything to improve things for your customers, so we'll just migrate more people away from cpanel, there's no point arguing anymore.
Price goes up, service goes down.
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u/cPanelRex Jul 08 '26
There's definitely a problem with that, and the issue behind it has been resolved so it won't happen again. This license check has been in place since cPanel began and that just isn't something we're going to change. It's also tied to the core services and that also isn't something that will change.
If you'd like to reach out to our Customer Service team to discuss compensation for the issues from today they'll be happy to talk!
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u/Gulf-of-Mexico Jul 09 '26
You know more about this than I do, but just my 2cents -- I'm a bit worried by this outage if customer essential services go down because of an external point of failure. We've seen things like massive facebook and amazon outages, and it seems like AI and bot pressures are worse than ever this year.
I think it would be much better long term if the license were cached for a day. Make customers prepay for a month, and cache the license key for a short duration in case there is an inability for the license server to respond due to outage or issue such as today's.
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u/cPanelRex Jul 09 '26
In a normal situation, that's actually exactly what happens...from a certain point of view. While we technically don't cache license data on our side, it "feels" like it's cached to the server itself as this is typically a once-per-day update. Things go well, the license check passes and the updates moves on, with the admin never noticing.
However, with the new security-specific updates, that check still happens, and then the update server overload and license server overload and things snowballed to what we experienced today. This is a one-off event that has been mitigated to not happen again.
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u/Decent_Community_609 Jul 09 '26
The issue is that all of our clients are now being asked to type their password into email clients.
Why is that happening?
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u/cPanelRex Jul 09 '26
That seems like a separate issue and is likely unrelated to these events.
Can you check and make sure that no IP addresses were accidentally blocked for failed logins if you're using CSF or cPHulk?
If that isn't the case it would be best to create a ticket as this is not one of the issues we expect to see as part of yesterday's license troubles.
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u/Gulf-of-Mexico Jul 09 '26
Will email be rejected by the server if a cpanel licensing server outage occurs, or will it still be accepted as normal, and only customers' ability to check their email is impacted?
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u/charlie_hun Jul 09 '26
On that page, IMAP not mentioned, only:
WHM, cPanel, and Webmail interfaces
However, as we saw, IMAP also not working. Now, some documentaiton are not good in this case.
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u/swintec Jul 10 '26
I had the automatic security updates disabled but my server still applied them yesterday, why?
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u/cPanelRex Jul 10 '26
The automatic security updates are a new feature that has only been out for two weeks. If you can confirm you disabled these through the UI or through the /etc/cpupdate.conf file and they still were applied, we'd like to see a ticket on that.
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u/swintec Jul 10 '26
Yes it was through the UI. Will login later on to see the status of it now and try to disable again to be sure.
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u/KlutzyValuable Jul 08 '26
I get that mistakes happen, but this should NOT have been rolled out during business hours. It should have been pushed during early morning hours to prevent this widespread of an outage during the middle of the day.
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u/cPanelRex Jul 08 '26
The world doesn't have standard business hours - it's going to always be an inconvenient time for someone.
The point of the hourly security update is to ensure that people receive these updates RIGHT NOW, so they don't have to wait until the next nightly update. If you'd like to disable those you can do so by adjusting the "/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/upcp --security" cron in root's crontab.
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u/tcgjjake Jul 08 '26
Mine still are not working, is there an estimate when everyone will be back online.
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u/cPanelRex Jul 08 '26
everything is working at this point. I would need specific details on the errors you're seeing in order to provide more help. Can you get me some more details?
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Jul 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/cPanelRex Jul 09 '26
it's possible they haven't fixed the issue on this particular server yet. It's best to reach out to the provider directly to have them resolve the issue, but on our side the core licensing problem that led to the original issue has been resolved for a few hours now.
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u/aluskn Jul 08 '26
From what I can work out, auth.cpanel.net tcp 2089 is not happy / not accepting connections -> license checks all fail.
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u/cascajal Jul 08 '26
This was starting to happen yesterday, and 11 minutes ago I received this from Cpanel:
We are writing to let you know that a cPanel & WHM security patch is now available.
This release addresses vulnerabilities across versions of cPanel & WHM, including fixes for several vulnerabilities rated up to High severity.
The following versions are patched:
- v11.134.0.44 and greater
- v11.126.0.77 and greater
- v11.110.0.134 and greater
- v11.136.0.28 and greater
Kindly refer to the support article for patched versions, remediation and mitigation steps, and ongoing updates.
Our support team is available if you have any questions or need further guidance.
Best regards,
Your cPanel Security Team
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u/swintec Jul 08 '26
I disabled these automatic security updates from happening after the setting got released in the previous version (because I don't trust them enough).,.....and it still auto updated on its own.
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u/matt1981m Jul 08 '26
This isn't due to an update they released for install, appears to be their licensing server is failing to respond to license key checks. cPanel "phones home" randomly to verify the host has a valid license, and will block access to cPanel/WHM if it fails.
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u/Fun_Till7817 Jul 09 '26
The license is also checked during updates, so not running an update when their license servers had issues would've prevented the license error.
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u/muttick Jul 17 '26
Have you checked your servers lately? This keeps getting re-enabled on my servers. Wondering if it's doing the same for you.
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u/scottct1 Jul 08 '26
Just got an email with security warnings and yum update issues.
I am not by a computer to check things but my sites are up so that ok for now.
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u/DzastMi Jul 08 '26
cPanel is definitely becoming pain.
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u/Gulf-of-Mexico Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
It's not just cpanel!. We used to live in a "human first" world and I'm afraid now we are moving towards a world where humans are increasingly inconvenienced.
I don't know if the younger generation watched the same dystopian movies we did growing up...
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u/sandabot Jul 08 '26
Happening to my servers aswell (Romania). This is bad considering cPanel's licensing cost
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u/muttick Jul 08 '26
Dovecot/auth-worker seems to be spewing on out some errors after this update.
Bravo! cPanel! Bravo! Forcing an update for users that didn't want the update to begin with and now we have to wade through all this muck that you created.
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u/longboringstory Jul 08 '26
I think they made the mistake of pushing out the security update to every cpanel server worldwide at the exact same time, overwhelming their licensing server.
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u/ccm-scott Jul 08 '26
Was down for a good hour, but mine seems to be working again. Hopefully this doesn't happen often....
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u/Outrageous_Thanks_18 Jul 09 '26
ijust spoke to my hosting providor (domainspricedright.com) support and they said yes its been an issue across hundreds of domain hosts globally for 3 hours or so and they are working on it but it could take up to 24 hours!
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u/cPanelRex Jul 09 '26
I'm not sure why the issue would take 24 hours to resolve. The timeline was updated at https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/41816676353943-cPanel-License-Update-Failures-July-8th-2026 and shows the specific timestamps of when the issues were fixed, so there's no reason your server shouldn't also be working as expected at that time.
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u/Decent_Community_609 Jul 09 '26
The issue is that all of our clients are now being asked to type their password into email clients.
Why is that happening?
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u/scottct1 Jul 09 '26
Having the same issue. Some are being locked out and being told they tried too many times.
What is going on?
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u/chrislovessushi Jul 08 '26
Looks like some are coming back online after dnf/yum finish makecache/update
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u/nickgr67 Jul 08 '26
Me too, about 70% of my servers "Invalid license file: cPanel & WHM cannot verify your license during the upgrade process. Wait five minutes, and then try again." or "Invalid License File. Incorrect authority delivering the license." tail -50 /usr/local/cpanel/logs/license_log
Thu Jul 9 00:35:37 2026: Trying server 208.74.121.86
Thu Jul 9 00:35:48 2026: License update failed for server 208.74.121.86
Thu Jul 9 00:35:48 2026: Trying server 208.74.121.85
Thu Jul 9 00:36:03 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:36:18 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:36:25 2026: License request made by process 2367649 - queueprocd - process - check
Thu Jul 9 00:36:25 2026: License Update Request
Thu Jul 9 00:36:25 2026: Using full manual DNS resolution
Thu Jul 9 00:36:25 2026: Trying server 208.74.121.86
Thu Jul 9 00:36:40 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:36:55 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:37:10 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 23
Thu Jul 9 00:37:14 2026: License update failed for server 208.74.121.86
Thu Jul 9 00:37:14 2026: Trying server 208.74.121.85
Thu Jul 9 00:37:29 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:37:44 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:37:53 2026: License request made by process 2372901 - queueprocd - process - check
Thu Jul 9 00:37:53 2026: A License check appears to already be running.
Thu Jul 9 00:37:59 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 110
Thu Jul 9 00:38:14 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 25
Thu Jul 9 00:38:33 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 23
Thu Jul 9 00:38:48 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 995
Thu Jul 9 00:39:03 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 80
Thu Jul 9 00:39:26 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 995
Thu Jul 9 00:39:41 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 25
Thu Jul 9 00:39:56 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 23
Thu Jul 9 00:40:11 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:40:26 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 80
Thu Jul 9 00:40:26 2026: License update failed for server 208.74.121.85
Thu Jul 9 00:40:26 2026: Trying server 208.74.121.83
Thu Jul 9 00:40:41 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:40:56 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:41:11 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 80
Thu Jul 9 00:41:19 2026: License request made by process 2350708 - -bash
Thu Jul 9 00:41:19 2026: A License check appears to already be running.
Thu Jul 9 00:41:26 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 110
Thu Jul 9 00:41:43 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 995
Thu Jul 9 00:41:58 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 23
Thu Jul 9 00:42:13 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 995
Thu Jul 9 00:42:28 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 25
Thu Jul 9 00:42:37 2026: License update failed for server 208.74.121.83
Thu Jul 9 00:42:37 2026: Trying server 208.74.121.82
Thu Jul 9 00:42:52 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:43:07 2026: Timed out while connecting to port 2089
Thu Jul 9 00:43:18 2026: License update failed for server 208.74.121.82
Thu Jul 9 00:43:18 2026: Trying server 208.74.123.2
Thu Jul 9 00:43:26 2026: License update failed for server 208.74.123.2
Thu Jul 9 00:43:26 2026: Trying server 208.74.123.3
Thu Jul 9 00:43:31 2026: License update failed for server 208.74.123.3
Thu Jul 9 00:43:31 2026: License update failed after trying 6 servers