unsupported debian version '14'

centy

New Member
Aug 14, 2025
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Hi there,

I've just installed Immich via the community helper scripts, and it runs fine until I restart the LXC. Then when I run with `pct start 100 --debug` I get this: produced output: unsupported debian version '14'

Any help would be amazing!

Thank you
 
sounds like within the container you (or those scripts) did an upgrade to Debian forky, which is not yet allow-listed in pve-container..
 
i have the same problem, a container upgraded itself it debian 14, and now it won't start

is there any workaround to get it to boot at all?
 
a container upgraded itself
How would this happen?

You could modify /usr/share/perl5/PVE/LXC/Setup/Debian.pm and replace
Bash:
die "unsupported debian version '$version'\n" if !($version >= 4 && $version <= 13);
with
Bash:
die "unsupported debian version '$version'\n" if !($version >= 4 && $version <= 14);
In general I would advise against modifying such system files. This will also stop working when the pve-container package is updated.
 
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i have the same problem, a container upgraded itself it debian 14, and now it won't start
How comes???

Did you reference "testing"? If that's the case you will probably never be able to return to 13 as you'll find a lot of system libraries are newer than "stable" now.

Do you have backups? Try to restore...
 
How would this happen?

pve has a cron job that runs apt update && apt upgrade at regular intervals.
this container pulled down an upgrade to debian 14, and the issue only occured when i rebooted the container today and it failed to boot

How comes???

Did you reference "testing"? If that's the case you will probably never be able to return to 13 as you'll find a lot of system libraries are newer than "stable" now.

Do you have backups? Try to restore...

see above

yes, the containers are backed up with weekly backups with the last 3 kept.
I can roll back if required.

when are we likely to see debian 14 support added?
 
Your options for now are to restore a backup or apply the workaround I shared. I'd probably fix that cronjob so it doesn't happen again, restore the backup and fix the repos. Please don't quote whole messages that are directly above yours. It's just noise.
 
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Your options for now are to restore a backup or apply the workaround I shared. I'd probably fix that cronjob so it doesn't happen again, restore the backup and fix the repos. Please don't quote whole messages that are directly above yours. It's just noise.

one persons noise is another persons solace.
you turned the passing of knowledge/advice into a snarl - food for thought
 
FWIW I ran into this very unexpectedly: I run Jellyfin in a container, and switched GPUs to an Intel ARC, which requires the intel-opencl-icd package... Which (as of right now) is only available in Debian buster, bookworm and sid (https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=intel-opencl-icd&searchon=names&suite=all&section=all).

Since I need intel-opencl-icd >= 23.x (https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/p...e-acceleration/intel/#configure-on-linux-host) I added the sid repo, which turned my version forky (whyyyyy?!).

Note to self: next time, just install the deb file from the Intel repo :/

Code:
# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:    Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux forky/sid
Release:    n/a
Codename:    forky
 
I added the sid repo, which turned my version forky (whyyyyy?!).

Because apt will upgrade things to the newest version it finds in the configured repositories. It can't read your mind you know. Recovery from this will be a bit difficult, might be easier to just re-install the container. Then learn about apt pinning.

Note to self: next time, just install the deb file from the Intel repo :/
Or that. Or from Debian backports (which isn't available yet for Trixie last I checked).
 
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Thanks @BobhWasatch! I was mostly being sarcastic, but your advice will definitely help others :)

I've been running Debian testing as my main OS for 10+ years, so I can guarantee I have - at one point or another - broken every rule on the Don's Break Debian page.

The "whyyyy" was primarily me not understanding why adding sid turned my trixie into forky/sid, since I made sure to add a priority 499 pin to all packages from sid, to prevent ending up with a FrankenDebian :(
 
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