Upgrade from CentOS 6 to CentOS 7

Updated: 28 September 2026 · Applies to: CentOS 6/7, AlmaLinux 8/9 and Rocky Linux 8/9 (ELevate)

CentOS 6 and CentOS 7 are both end of life and get no security updates. The old CentOS 6 → 7 upgrade tool no longer works. These are the current options.

From CentOS 6

There is no supported in-place upgrade to a current system. Install a fresh server with AlmaLinux 9 or Rocky Linux 9 and move your sites, databases and settings to it. Our support team can help with the migration.

From CentOS 7: ELevate

The ELevate project (by AlmaLinux, based on Red Hat's Leapp) upgrades CentOS 7 in place to version 8, and then 8 → 9 → 10 in further steps. CentOS 7's repositories have moved to the archive, so fix them first (see "Resolved Error: YumRepo, All mirror URLs are not using ftp, http[s] or file").

yum update -y && reboot
yum install -y http://repo.almalinux.org/elevate/elevate-release-latest-el$(rpm --eval %rhel).noarch.rpm
yum install -y leapp-upgrade leapp-data-almalinux     # or leapp-data-rocky for Rocky Linux
leapp preupgrade
# read /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt and fix every inhibitor, then:
leapp upgrade
reboot

After the reboot, the upgrade continues for several minutes; watch it on the console. Repeat the same steps on version 8 to reach 9.

cPanel servers

Do not run Leapp directly on a cPanel server. cPanel provides its own ELevate script, which supports CentOS 7 → AlmaLinux 8, AlmaLinux 8 → 9 and 9 → 10:

wget -O /scripts/elevate-cpanel https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cpanel/elevate/release/elevate-cpanel
chmod 700 /scripts/elevate-cpanel
/scripts/elevate-cpanel --check
/scripts/elevate-cpanel --start      # the server reboots several times; follow with --status and --log

Note: Take a backup before you change partitions or upgrade the operating system. A mistake can make data unreadable or the server unbootable.

On a Ucartz VPS, you can also take a snapshot or backup from the VPS dashboard (if available on your plan) before you start.