Is there a new virtualmin-lamp-stack for Debian 11 (Bullseye)?

@Joe just provided the underlying reason why some packages are getting autoremoved under various circumstances: Virtualmin has a top (bottom?) level package, virtualmin-lamp-stack, that pulls in a wide variety of other packages. (Hmmm… I’m using nginx instead of apache. I see lemp-stack for that… See note below***)

That was quite helpful!

I just checked: after my Deb 11 upgrade, that package is no longer installed. I’m guessing it got auto-uninstalled during the upgrade.

If I understand correctly, the Deb 10 (buster) version is actually 100% a Deb 11 version as well, correct?
AND, no need to switch to some kind of VM 7 repos?

Not sure why it got uninstalled… but I plan to reinstall it immediately.

NOTE: nothing is complaining that virtualmin-lamp-stack is NOT installed. Seems like there ought to be a warning bell somewhere?

NOTE 2: some interesting things noted between the normal and minimal lemp-stacks:

  • The minimal version installs: clamav-testfiles webalizer milter-greylist unrar p7zip and recommends php-mcrypt
  • The full version recommends three of those, webalizer php-mcrypt and unrar and installs the others. So it actually installs fewer (out of those 6)?

Thanks for all you do!!

(UPDATE: I’ve now installed virtualmin-lemp-stack-minimal … hopefully a good system stabilizer :wink: )

SYSTEM INFORMATION
Operating system Debian Linux 11
Webmin version 2.021
Virtualmin version 7.5
Authentic theme version 20.21

I only noticed on a second reading that you’re saying the major OS version upgrade may have made the change, and that may be so. I’ve edited this comment lightly to reflect that, but I’m probably talking past the problem in some of this.

It only did so if you told it to, by installing something that conflicts with something that is depended on by the Virtualmin stack package, or you removed some package depended on by the stack package.

You’re talking about these things like they are happening automatically (e.g. an autoremove in another thread), but they simply do not happen automatically (neither in Virtualmin or in Debian/Ubuntu in a default install). So, you’ve configured something somewhere, or installed some other software, that is making these changes, if you aren’t making the changes yourself (though a major version OS upgrade might involve package changes that cause conflicts or needed to remove something to resolve deps). But, even on OS upgrade, apt will tell you it is removing software when you install something that conflicts. When you’re installing software, you should make a habit of looking at the list of things it is going to do, because it can be surprising and destructive.

The Virtualmin 6 repos were never tested by us on Debian 11, but yes, an upgrade from Debian 10 to Debian 11 does not require a switch of repositories. Our packages are compatible (and, in fact, have always been the same across all distros…only binary packages have ever had differences, and in the case of Debian/Ubuntu, there is only one binary package in our repos at this point, which is also the same across all supported distros).

The stack packages, on the other hand, have changed quite a bit between 6 and 7, which is why we don’t recommend you switch casually, even if upgrading your distro. A switch between the Virtualmin 6 stack package and the Virtualmin 7 stack package could cause problems (probably won’t, and we think we’ve tested/fixed the most common ways it could fail, but…be safe, and only do that if you know what you’re doing and actually understand all the implications).

That’d be a bug, but I believe you are looking at an old version of the package; there have been a bunch of changes in the stack packages between 6 and 7 (and the Debian and Ubuntu stack packages merged into one). It’s entirely possible we’ve made mistakes or have oversights in what shouldn’t be in the minimal package, but we’d need a bug report against the current version: https://github.com/virtualmin/virtualmin-lamp-stack-ubu

Note also that there are Depends, Recommends, and Suggests. You may have configured your system in a way that pulls in more packages than is the default (by default, apt will install Depends and Recommends, but not Suggests).

We always welcome help catching our inevitable human errors! There are just so many distros and so many packages, and they change from distro version to distro version, too. It’s a lot of complexity. Just make sure you’re reporting a current issue and make sure you’re comparing apples to apples (same distro/version installed from the same Virtualmin repositories).

As far as we’re concerned, if you’ve removed the stack package, you want to do something different from our default stack, and we can’t stop you from doing that. We’re not going to pick a fight over it. It’s your system. It doesn’t happen by accident! You actively did something to make it happen.

I think all we can do is recommend you be careful with the package manager, especially on Debian/Ubuntu, where it can do terrifying things with what may seem like a casual warning. But, it does warn you before it does terrifying things, you just have to read it and think through what it’s telling you it’s about to do. It’ll say something along the lines of, “The following packages will be REMOVED” before it removes packages. If you see it is removing stuff you need, don’t say yes.

Oh, but I should also mention that an OS upgrade from one major version to another can and likely will remove packages to satisfy dependencies or resolve conflicts. It will still tell you it’s doing it, but in an OS upgrade there will be so many packages changing you may not notice something you want is being removed.

And, you may need to accept that something you need will be removed, and you’ll need to reinstall it (and maybe reconfigure it), as part of the OS upgrade. Just something to be aware of when doing OS upgrades. A major version upgrade should be carefully undertaken, with known-good backups and while taking notes of what’s happening (and doing some googling about any surprises you see in the package changes).

@Joe,
Good thoughts.
“All” I did was an in-place upgrade to Debian 11. :wink:

Not surprisingly, a HUGE pile of packages was replaced.

Obviously I had misplaced trust that the Debian upgrade wouldn’t remove anything crucial.

Fortunately, dpkg.log tells me at least part of what happened: during the upgrade, virtualmin-lemp-stack (deb-10 version) was purposefully removed.

WHY, I could not say with any confidence.

Is it possible that a package missing a version in the Dev11 repo makes a difference?

As a help to others, here is some scripting that helps identify previous package actions in dpkg.log…

# Find all install/remove/upgrade actions
egrep ' (remove|upgrade|install) ' dpkg.log >chg10-11
# Analyze each line and print what I want...
#    Break out the package name (w/o version) in field 4. It's in var a[1]
#    Look at the version. If deb10 or 11 (possibly with a '-'), use a simplified name.
#    Finally, print the date/time, action, package, and version involved
awk '{split($4,a,":");dv=$5;if($5 ~/deb[-]?10/) {dv="Deb10"} else if ($5 ~/deb[-]?11/) {dv="Deb11"}; print $1, $2, $3, a[1],dv;} ' chg10-11 >chg10-11-list.txt
# now sort on field 4, the package name
sort -k4 chg10-11-list.txt >chg10-11-sort.txt
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