How to Uninstall LiteSpeed Web Server

This guide covers removing LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) from your server. The same procedure applies to all LiteSpeed variants (4 / 8 / 10 worker, DirectAdmin builds) — variant differences are licensing tiers, not separate installs.

Note: Uninstalling the software does not cancel your billing. If you also want to cancel the license, please reply to your support ticket with the server IP — billing is handled separately.

Prerequisites

• Root SSH access to your server
• A maintenance window — uninstalling will briefly stop your web server
• A working backup of
  Terminal

  Copy

  /etc

  , your sites, and any custom LSWS config

If LiteSpeed was installed via the cPanel WHM plugin, the cleanest removal is from inside WHM:

This restores Apache as the active web server. Once back on Apache, run the manual uninstall in Step 3 to remove the LSWS files.

cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
./build set webserver apache
./build apache
./build php n
./build rewrite_confs

This rebuilds DirectAdmin against Apache and turns off LSWS.

This is the official script shipped by LiteSpeed Tech and removes everything under

/usr/local/lsws/

/usr/local/lsws/admin/misc/uninstall.sh

Confirm with y when prompted. The script stops the LSWS service, removes the lsws user, and deletes the install directory.

# Should print nothing
ls /usr/local/lsws/ 2>/dev/null

# Should NOT show 'lshttpd' or 'litespeed' processes
ps aux | grep -Ei 'lshttpd|litespeed' | grep -v grep

# On cPanel: confirm Apache is serving
systemctl status httpd  # or 'apache2' on Debian/Ubuntu

If all three are clean, LiteSpeed is fully removed.

Sites are returning 502 or 404 after uninstall

The web server is not running or PHP-FPM lost its handler. Restart Apache:

systemctl restart httpd     # CentOS / AlmaLinux / Rocky / CloudLinux
systemctl restart apache2   # Ubuntu / Debian

Then on cPanel run

/scripts/rebuildhttpdconf

./build rewrite_confs

uninstall.sh not found

LSWS was not installed via the vendor installer (rare). Manual cleanup:

systemctl stop lsws 2>/dev/null
systemctl disable lsws 2>/dev/null
rm -rf /usr/local/lsws/
userdel -r lsws 2>/dev/null

License file leftovers

After uninstall, the registered license file is gone with

/usr/local/lsws/