This is an advanced task and should be performed by more experienced users. This is only done on a dedicated machine or an unmanaged VPS. This will not apply to shared hosting.
It's worth noting that many hosts will allow you to have SSH, but not at the root level. This is for updating your applications.
You will need the following:
You'll need direct SSH access to your server.
A copy of PuTTY or other terminal - PuTTY is available from: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/PuTTY/download.html
PuTTY comes in various flavors - pick the one that fits your desktop operating system.
You'll need your username and password for SSH to use PuTTY as well as your IP or server name
nstall PuTTY on your local machine using the proper instructions for your OS.
Open PuTTY -- You'll see a screen that looks like the following:
Click Open - you may get a message asking you if you want to accept the Key - say Yes.
Next you'll see this:
Enter your login name and your password.
You'll be logged in at this point:
Yum is the updater for some of the more popular distributions of Linux. It will present a few downloads (if available) for installation. Just select YES to download and YES to install.
After you update, let's check the Apache web server.
Type
httpd -v- In this case you see we are running (at time of writing) the latest and greatest).
You will need to verify your version against the current version(s) located at httpd.apache.org.
Should you be out of date on this, it is suggested that you contact your host to update Apache for you.
Be sure and conduct a full backup of the system using cPanel® or other means before attempting an update.
Servers, like your desktop, have to stay updated. There are many other software stacks on a typical server that attackers can hit. These include the Kernel of the OS, supporting cast members like OpenSSL, Network services, PHP, MySQL, and many more.
The YUM updater is a tool that contacts good sources for Linux and other parts of the system updates. If they are available, it will handle the updating for you.