Safely Updating and Upgrading a Production VPS Server with Backup Plan

I noticed there was upgradable packages on the VPS Server I run. Since this is the one hosting BookStack Publicly on my Website, I wanted to treat this with as much caution as possible. 

 I wanted to check what was upgradable: 

 app list --upgradable 

 I leveraged AI to take a look at the packages that were upgradable and get a better understanding for my approach: 

 

 

 

 Category 

 Safe to Update? 

 Notes 

 

 

 

 

 cloud-init 

 ✅ Yes 

 Handles initial cloud setup. Updating is safe and common. 

 

 

 grub-efi-* 

 ⚠️ Yes, with caution 

 These are bootloader packages. Safe but be cautious on production VMs. A reboot is required after update. 

 

 

 libldap-* 

 ✅ Yes 

 Core system libraries. These affect services using LDAP but are safe to upgrade. 

 

 

 monarx-agent 

 ✅ Yes 

 This is a Hostinger security monitoring agent. Regularly updated. 

 

 

 php8.1-* 

 ✅ Yes 

 You’re using a PPA ( deb.sury.org ) for PHP — updates are fine and likely beneficial. Restart PHP-FPM afterward. 

 

 

 

 I decided that the quick reboot wouldn't take long and services on my site aren't in need of scheduling a time for a reboot so I went ahead and did this while keeping an eye on the Cardinals game. If this were a critical system with many users operating on it, I would schedule a time to do these upgrades and restart (After-Hours) or wait until a need. I took a snapshot of my server before running the upgrades: 

 

 

 

 After the snapshot was complete, I went ahead with the update: 

 sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade -y 

 I Ticked the boxes to restart services (PHP, MySQL, Etc) Then I used: 

 sudo reboot 

 I waited for the server to come back online and made sure that php, mysql, was all up and running. 

 SUCCESS!!