How to Replace the Hardened Kernel of cPanel with a Standard Kernel?

You will receive a ready kernel along with the control panel when hosting on a cPanel server. That being said, you can use any common third-party kernel in place of the hardened kernel that comes with cPanel.

The hardened kernel from cPanel & WHM version 68 is now deprecated, therefore proceed with caution. They don’t offer updates for this kernel anymore. This is the reason we highly advise you to enable symlink protection settings as soon as the hardened kernel is removed.

If you have no idea how, please read this article: How to Enable Symlink Protection in WHM?

We also suggest you plan downtime for this process as it needs a server reboot.

To Replace the Hardened Kernel of cPanel with a Standard Kernel

We start by removing the cPanel-provided hardened kernel followed by the kernel installation.

1. Log in to your server with SSH.

2. Run this command:

rm /etc/yum.repos.d/cPkernel.repo

The system will remove the cPkernel or cPanel kernel from the server.

3. Enter and run this command immediately:

yum list --showduplicates kernel

A list of available kernels will appear that you can install on the system.

4. To install a kernel, please run the command:

yum install KERNELNAME 

Do not forget to replace the KERNELNAME with the kernel version you want to install.

We recommend you run:

yum install kernel-2.6.32 

This command will install the latest kernel version currently available.

5. Reboot your server once the installation is complete.

If you don’t know how to reboot your server, please give these articles a read:
How to Reboot a VPS/Dedicated Server via WHM?

How to Reboot a Linux Server via SSH?