I was running Debian 7 and due to the Letsencrypt root certificates expiring I finally decided to upgrade the server. So I upgraded from Debian 7->8, then 8->9, then 9->10, then I started upgrading from 10->11, and did an apt upgrade, but when I went to do apt dist-upgrade, I saw that it was going to remove 17.4 GB of disk space. So, I’m assuming it was going to remove all of the files for all of my virtual hosts because that’s the only thing that would be that large. Now I’m left with a system where some of the packages are Debian 10 and some are Debian 11.
I currently have the following installed:
Webmin version
1.840
Virtualmin version
5.07
So I opened the Virtualmin install.sh file to figure out how to add the GPG signing keys, added the keys, and added the following to my apt sources:
deb http://software.virtualmin.com/vm/6/gpl/apt virtualmin-buster main
deb http://software.virtualmin.com/vm/6/gpl/apt virtualmin-universal main
However, when I try to upgrade Virtualmin, I still get:
After this operation, 17.4 GB disk space will be freed.
Is there any way to update Webmin/Virtualmin at this point, or am I basically looking at just doing a fresh install on another server? Or would waiting until Debian 11 is supported by Virtualmin be a viable option?
That’s a serious issue, and maybe much more complicated than upgrading some Virtualmin packages.
And, once you do get to Virtualmin, you’re going to need to be more specific here:
What do you mean by “upgrade Virtualmin”? What specifically are you doing to upgrade Virtualmin? Upgrading the webmin-virtual-server module should do nothing but install the new version of that module. What are you actually running to have it say 17.4GB of space will be freed?
Probably, but you shouldn’t be focused on Webmin/Virtualmin until you have a functional Debian system. If you’d asked before you started I would have said, “stop at Debian 10, because 11 is not yet supported”. But, it’s mostly harmless to go on up to 11 if you already have a functional Virtualmin system. It’s not as safe or simple as going to a supported distro, but it won’t be a disaster.
But, the fact that you’re system is in between 10 and 11 is potentially a disaster. I don’t know what to recommend, as you haven’t provided any details about what errors showed up on your way to this state or which packages are “stuck”. (And, this may not be an area I’m super helpful in. I’ve only done a few dozen Debian upgrades myself and never to 11.)
I don’t see any evidence your domains will be removed, but I also can’t see how what’s being removed could free up 17.4GB of space. There is a database upgrade, which is something you should not take lightly (I would recommend backups at every new version…e.g. from 7 to 8, back’em up, from 8 to 9, back’em up, from 9 to 10 back-em up), because that’s the mostly likely place for the upgrade to get hairy. You can probably just run the upgrade command on your databases and expect it to work, but things can go wrong.
Though, with that said, you’ve already skipped over the most risky of the upgrades, I think. 10.3 to 10.5 is pretty small, I think.
So, I don’t know what’s going on with that large “will be freed” value, but I don’t think it’s anything to do with Virtualmin or Webmin or your accounts/domains and I doubt it’s anything serious (it may be that it’s going to remove a bunch of old packages that are cached from the previous version(s)).
If it were me, I’d do a safety backup as it is now, and then just let it rip and see how it goes. You’re going to have to fix some stuff, no matter how well it goes.
It doesn’t look like anything is particularly broken, to me. I think the package manager knows what it’s doing, so maybe just let it keep going.
Though again, for anyone reading this and thinking of embarking on the same journey…skipping through a bunch of different major versions all at once is much more risky than jumping one major version every year or two, and jumping to a version unsupported by Virtualmin is also higher risk than sticking with 10 for now. We don’t expect problems with 11, but we don’t know because we haven’t had time to do a lot of testing. You’re signing up to be a guinea pig.