Symptoms
When logging in WHM with root, the initial setup wizard will hang and not allow you to continue further or to complete the initial setup process.
Cause
The issue is caused by a new survey that was added to WHM causing the system file /var/cpanel/analytics/system_idto be missing which has lead to the above mentioned issue.
The error that we observe in /usr/local/cpanel/logs/error_log is the following.
[2026-03-25 15:04:08 -0600] info [xml-api] API failure: (XID zrru8j) The system cannot find a file named “/var/cpanel/analytics/system_id”. [get_in_product_survey_url] version [1].
We've opened an internal case for our development team to investigate this further. For reference, the case number is CPANEL-52282 Follow this article to receive an email notification when a solution is published in the product.
Resolution
To resolve the issue trigger the write_unique_system_id function of the cPanel Analytics library with the following command.
/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/perl -MCpanel::Analytics -e 'use Data::Dumper; print Dumper(Cpanel::Analytics::write_unique_system_id());'
This will regenerate the missing file and will allow you to fill out the survey and finish the initial setup process.
