1and1 VPS, Step 2: System Updates

Logging into Plesk for the first time since the reimage.

1. Change password.
2. Update Profile (so that the server can send status reports)
3. Optional. Access the IP Address Restrictions settings page and add your IP address as the only IP that can access the panel. Making very sure that, if your IP is not fixed, to include some wildcards for an IP address range.

Updating base CentOS packages is the essential next step. SSH into the server:

1. Export a list of all installed packages to a file: 
• yum list installed > /root/base_packages.txt
2. Perform the update: 
• yum update
3. Export a list of all installed packages now that the update is complete: 
• yum list installed > /root/installed_updates.txt

Now, login to Plesk to update. (With luck this time, the update should work - yesterday it broke the server!)

1. Selecting Install or Upgrade Product, proceeding to update from 10.1.1 to 10.3.1. Installing the update takes some time, particularly with all the 'microupdates'. Started to think it had crashed! Update successful.
2. Entering the update interface again, I am selecting other components. In this instance, SpamAssassin for additional features for the mail server and Watchdog; for system monitoring. The latter may mean I don't need to install Cacti. (Why is Plesk downloading more 'microupdates'?)
3. SpamAssassin seems to have failed to install correctly. Probably needs some configuration changes. Get to that later.
4. The update interface now reports available component upgrades. Looked odd to me (apache and mysql), so a quick search uncovered Component Updates won't install. Lucky I checked, I hate errors. Just have to watch this link for the Plesk team to answer.

Now that the Plesk update is complete I do not want Plesk to automatically update. Log into Virtuozzo and disable the firewall rule.