How to manage date and time for Plesk autoupdates?

Plesk for Windows Plesk for Linux kb: how-to

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Plesk for Linux
Plesk for Windows

Question

How to set weekdays and/or time range (the start and the end hour) for the installation of automatic Plesk updates?

Answer

Date and time can be managed for automatic Plesk updates for:
- Clusters of licenses. This solution is only applicable to Plesk Partners and can be done via Key Administrator Partner Central. Details can be found in Plesk Blog.
- An individual server. Details are specified below.

To specify the desired weekdays and time range when Plesk auto-updates are installed, changes should be applied to the panel.ini file.

Note: You must specify not less than two weekdays and/or hours in UTC (convert your local time to UTC).

Note: The specified time range sets the desired time interval during which the installation of updates starts but does not guarantee that the installation of updates will be finished within that interval.

Solution via Plesk interface

Log into Plesk.
Open the Panel.ini Editor extension in Extensions > My Extensions.

Note: If the Panel.ini Editor extension is not installed, install it from the Extensions menu.
In Panel.ini Editor switch to the Editor tab.
Add pattern below at the end of the file:

CONFIG_TEXT: [updates]
updateDays = weekday1,weekday2
timeFrameStart = hour
timeFrameEnd = hour

where:
- weekday1 and weekday2 are two separate weekdays.
- hour is hour in UTC.

For example, if the entry below is added to the panel.ini file:

CONFIG_TEXT: [updates]
updateDays = saturday,sunday
timeFrameStart = 11
timeFrameEnd = 18

Plesk updates will be installed only on Saturday and Sunday between 11 and 18 hours (UTC).

Solution for a Linux server via SSH

Connect to the server via SSH.
Сheck panel.ini availability:

# ls -l /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini
- If the file /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini does not exist or is empty, create it by copying the sample configuration file /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini:
  
  # cp /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini.sample /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini
Open the file /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini in any text editor. In this example, we are using the vi editor:

# vi /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini
Add pattern below at the end of the file:

CONFIG_TEXT: [updates]
updateDays = weekday1,weekday2
timeFrameStart = hour
timeFrameEnd = hour

where:
- weekday1 and weekday2 are two separate weekdays.
- hour is hour in UTC.

For example, if the entry below is added to the panel.ini file:

CONFIG_TEXT: [updates]
updateDays = saturday,sunday
timeFrameStart = 11
timeFrameEnd = 18

Plesk updates will be installed only on Saturday and Sunday between 11 and 18 hours (UTC).

Solution for a Windows server via RDP

Connect to the server via RDP.
Open the file panel.ini located in the folder %plesk_dir%admin\conf\ in any text (just paste this path in Windows Explorer to open) in any text editor.
- If the panel.ini file does not exist, create it by copying the sample configuration file panel.ini.sample.
Add pattern below at the end of the file:

CONFIG_TEXT: [updates]
updateDays = weekday1,weekday2
timeFrameStart = hour
timeFrameEnd = hour

where:
- weekday1 and weekday2 are two separate weekdays.
- hour is hour in UTC.

For example, if the entry below is added to the panel.ini file:

CONFIG_TEXT: [updates]
updateDays = saturday,sunday
timeFrameStart = 11
timeFrameEnd = 18

Plesk updates will be installed only on Saturday and Sunday between 11 and 18 hours (UTC).

Additional information

Administrator's Guide: Plesk Updates

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