"I mixed up a lot"

[MoxProxxer]

So to be clear: The genesis of two machines where I decided to install Proxmox really is colorful.

Initially the servers were installed Wheezy, then Jessie, then Stretch, then Buster, then downgrade to Stretch again, then Proxmox (5.3).

I would not consider that "to have mixed up a lot" as Tom of Proxmox put it in another thread, but I understand that it is easy for developers to adopt the point of view of a "somehow tainted system where a fresh/clean install would be better".

I would like to remind everyone - even the Proxmox devs - that digital systems tend to be deterministic. You install Version X, then Version Y, then back to Version X and in the ideal case, you are at the equivalent point as if you installed X in the first place.

Of course in the ideal case, because as we all know install and deinstall scripts are far from perfect, so there may be omissions, leftovers and similar. That's where yur competent sysadmin comes in - to clean up the mess the devs made. ;-)

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So, referring to: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-ve-5-4-released.53298/#post-246383

where I heard the statement that an openssh-server should not depend on "libcomerr2". Evidently on this system with its rich heritage this is the case, which I proved later in the thread.

The proof was met by the so often heard "you should do a clean install" by Tom, while complementing me en passant out of that thread. Well...

I believe I can claim that after almost two weeks of blood, sweat and tears, these systems are pretty much equivalent to a clean install, and if there are any bumps on the road, it may very well be due to my inexperience - yet - with Proxmox, but not the base state of the systems.

Fortunately, I do have a 3rd system running with Proxmox, which was used as the evaluation ground before going for the other systems. Proxmox was not able to be installed there "bare metal", because the Proxmox installer does not recognize eMMC storage, but "a hopefully clean" installation on a freshly installed Debian Stretch went well.

So I connected to this system and inspected the SSH daemon there:
it also links against libcomerr2

So whether that should or should not happen, it does happen.

And Tom: I will certainly not resort to "clean installs", because I have not been doing Linux for the past 24+ years, just to deploy "Windows strategies". Thank you.

 

[tom]

And Tom: I will certainly not resort to "clean installs", because I have not been doing Linux for the past 24+ years, just to deploy "Windows strategies". Thank you.

You can of course fix your issues, but it looks you cannot fix it, instead you "spam" our forum with weird issues and questions, all caused by your buster upgrades and downgrades adventures. As you do not seems to like my advice, I am out here.

 

[rhonda]

Initially the servers were installed Wheezy, then Jessie, then Stretch, then Buster, then downgrade to Stretch again, then Proxmox (5.3).

I would not consider that "to have mixed up a lot" as Tom of Proxmox put it in another thread, but I understand that it is easy for developers to adopt the point of view of a "somehow tainted system where a fresh/clean install would be better".

I would like to remind everyone - even the Proxmox devs - that digital systems tend to be deterministic. You install Version X, then Version Y, then back to Version X and in the ideal case, you are at the equivalent point as if you installed X in the first place.

The ideal case would mean that the developers support the downgrade. Debian doesn't, and proxmox does neither. Especially with the base of Debian, in the case of library transitions an the likes this might lead to interesting issues, so when you ask Debian developers you usually will receive responses of like "you can do that, but if it breaks you can keep the shards".

Downgrades aren't supported. Yes, obviously it helps if you have experience to figure out what might go wrong with it, but there is so much things that play into it that it's strongly discouraged, and even Debian people themself do rather go for a reinstall instead. This is because the maintainer scripts can (and will) change stuff during an upgrade, like changes to config file syntax, data structures in databases, to only name two examples - which won't get reverted when you downgrade the package. This might lead to various different issues.

But: It shouldn't lead to a broken package state like you quote here:

So, referring to: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-ve-5-4-released.53298/#post-246383

where I heard the statement that an openssh-server should not depend on "libcomerr2". Evidently on this system with its rich heritage this is the case, which I proved later in the thread.

You misread it there. Thomas specifically pointed out that openssh-server package directly depends on libcomerr2, so if you have openssh-server installed without libcomerr2 your system is already in a broken state.

I believe I can claim that after almost two weeks of blood, sweat and tears, these systems are pretty much equivalent to a clean install, and if there are any bumps on the road, it may very well be due to my inexperience - yet - with Proxmox, but not the base state of the systems.

openssh isn't part of Proxmox but of the base system. Your issues with not having libcomerr2 has nothing to do with your inexperience with Proxmox.

I have one suggestion: Install apt-show-versions. *Only* have stretch in your sources.list entries. Then run apt update to make sure your package lists only contain stretch. And then please paste the output of `apt-show-versions | grep -v uptodate` to see which packages you potentially have overlooked in your downgrade. Besides that a downgrade is still not supported this might help you figure out what you have overlooked in your downgrade process. Also, an "apt -f install" without any argument could also be very helpful and probably have fixed your broken package state and got yout libcomerr2 installed.