Meridian theme missing after a cPanel upgrade

cPanel 138 ships Meridian as a separate plugin that depends on ea-podman. If docker-ce is installed the plugin cannot install, and only Jupiter appears.

You upgraded a server to cPanel & WHM 138 or later, but Meridian is not offered when you edit a package in WHM or switch themes inside a cPanel account — only Jupiter is listed. This page explains why, and how to install the theme.

Applies to VPS and dedicated servers where you hold the cPanel licence and root access. On WebGee shared, reseller and Premium hosting there is nothing to install — Meridian is already available, and you switch to it from inside cPanel. See The Meridian theme.

Why it is missing

Meridian is not part of the cPanel upgrade itself. It ships as a separate package, cpanel-meridian-plugin, which the upgrade tries to pull in, and which depends on a chain of other packages:

cpanel-meridian-plugin  →  cpanel-webapp-plugin  →  ea-podman  →  podman-docker

podman-docker provides the docker command using Podman. So does Docker's own docker-ce. RPM refuses to install two packages that own the same command, and the whole chain fails — quietly, during the upgrade, leaving you on a fully-upgraded cPanel with no Meridian.

Confirm that this is what happened

As root, ask the package manager to install the plugin and read the error rather than the outcome:

dnf install cpanel-meridian-plugin

On servers still using yum, the command and the output are the same. A conflict looks like this:

Error:
 Problem: package cpanel-meridian-plugin requires cpanel-webapp-plugin >= 1.3.1
  - package cpanel-webapp-plugin requires ea-podman >= 1.0-27
  - package ea-podman requires podman-docker >= 3
  - package docker-ce conflicts with docker provided by podman-docker

Answer n at the prompt. Then check what is actually installed:

rpm -q docker-ce cpanel-meridian-plugin
/usr/local/cpanel/cpanel -V

If docker-ce is installed and the cPanel version is 138 or higher, the diagnosis above is yours. If the version is below 138, that is the reason instead — Meridian does not exist on earlier releases, and no amount of package work will produce it.

If you do not use Docker

Most servers have docker-ce because something installed it once, not because anything runs on it. Check before removing it:

docker ps -a
docker volume ls

Removing docker-ce stops every container on the server and they do not come back by themselves. Images, containers and volumes under /var/lib/docker are not migrated to Podman. Export anything you need first, and only continue if docker ps -a is empty or lists nothing you still want.

Stop and disable the Docker service:

systemctl disable --now docker docker.socket

Remove Docker's packages:

dnf remove docker-ce docker-ce-cli docker-ce-rootless-extras containerd.io

Install the theme, which now pulls ea-podman and podman-docker with it:
```
dnf install cpanel-meridian-plugin
```
Confirm the package is installed:
```
rpm -q cpanel-meridian-plugin
```

The docker command still works afterwards — podman-docker provides it as a wrapper around Podman, which takes the same arguments for everyday use.

If you do need Docker

You cannot keep docker-ce and install Meridian on the same server. The dependency is not optional and the conflict is not a bug you can override safely. You have three honest choices:

Move the Docker workload to another server, then follow the section above.
Migrate the containers to Podman. ea-podman is cPanel's supported container tooling and Podman runs most Docker images unchanged. Recreate the containers with podman first, verify them, and only then remove docker-ce.
Stay on Jupiter. Meridian is optional. Jupiter remains supported and every cPanel tool is reachable from it, so a server that exists to run containers loses nothing important by skipping the new theme.

Do not force the install with --nobest, --skip-broken or by removing podman-docker's conflict. It leaves the docker command owned by neither package and breaks both.

Offer Meridian to accounts

Installing the plugin does not switch anyone over. The theme is chosen per account:

In WHM, open Packages → Edit a Package.
Select the package, set cPanel Theme to Meridian, and save.
For an existing account, open Account Functions → Modify an Account and set its theme there — editing a package does not change accounts already created from it.

Meridian is opt-in for the account holder too. Once it is available, users can move between Meridian and Jupiter from inside cPanel, so setting it on a package is an offer rather than a migration.

If it still does not appear

The plugin installed but WHM shows no Meridian option. Log out of WHM and back in; the theme list is read at login.
dnf install reports nothing to do. The plugin is already installed and the problem is the account or package theme setting, not the package.
The upgrade never reached 138. Check your update tier in WHM under Server Configuration → Update Preferences. A server pinned to an LTS tier stays on its release until that tier moves.