cPanel’s Manually Updated Hostname Alert

If you have recently updated your cPanel servers to 11.46, you may have received something that looks like the following alert.

WHM has detected a manual hostname change.
To fix this problem, we recommend that you perform the following action:
Update your hostname in WHM’s (http://new.hostname.com:2087/scripts2/changehostname) interface (Home » Networking Setup » Change Hostname).

If you did, then that means that your hostname was updated outside of WHM after cPanel was installed on that server. The fix is simple.

First log into SSH and run the below command:

root@host [~]# /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/check_valid_server_hostname
ERROR: WHM has detected a manual hostname change.


If your server is a WHM webserver, you need only navigate to WHM >> Change Hostname

Once that’s done, you can test that your server will no longer send an alert by running the hostname validation script manually:

root@host [~]# /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/check_valid_server_hostname 
OK

After the change you have made it’s confirmed that issue is fixed. Please always make sure you have a valid A record for your hostname.