We’ve just finished rolling out an exciting batch of template updates to all SmartVPS customers on our Alma9 template!
Two new PHP versions are available! PHP 8.4 and 8.5, which are available to be used for your websites and/or your VPS’s PHP-CLI! These are the latest/greatest PHP versions that offer increased speed and reliability. We recommend you switch your sites to these new versions if your sites support them, and reap the benefits ASAP!
A new phpMyAdmin version is rolled out and available to all SmartVPS customers! This version, 5.2.3 is the latest secure/stable release and supports PHP 8.4 and 8.5!
All Alma9 templates have been upgraded to AlmaLinux release 9.8 (Olive Jaguar):
AlmaLinux 9.8 introduces new compiler toolsets, updated module streams, and improved security. This release adds Python 3.14 as a new package, brings new streams for MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and Ruby, and ships an updated Node.js 24 module stream. Container and virtualization support is updated with the latest versions of Podman, Buildah, libvirt, QEMU-KVM, and skopeo. Security is improved with updates to OpenSSL, OpenSSH, GnuTLS, SELinux policies, and crypto-policies.
AlmaLinux 9.8 also ships an ALESCo-approved kernel backport ahead of upstream: a fix for excessive CPU consumption by systemd and ps during task cleanup. We originally submitted the fix to CentOS Stream 9, but its inclusion was deferred to at least RHEL 9.9 — so ALESCo voted to include it in 9.8 now. If you’ve been seeing that CPU spike during task cleanup, it’s fixed today instead of a quarter from now.
New (patched for recent vulnerabilities) HTTPD version: Apache/2.4.68:
This fix was rolled out weeks ago when these vulnerabilities were first discovered, but now the fixes are baked into our template so any new SmartVPS you spin up will be pre-patched!
See our post here for more details!
MariaDB version has been updated to 10.11.15!
We’ve always used MariaDB, because it’s an awesome and open source fork of MySQL. This has been upgraded on all VPS template to 10.11.15, which has an EOL (End Of Life) in 2028!
We are always working behind the scenes to ensure that server-side software provided by Brownrice is updated to the most performant/recent versions, patched, and secure! As always, contact us if you have any questions.