Updating Proxmox 2.3 underlying Debian (6/squeeze) operating system

[magicfab]

Carefully read this until the end - this OS / Proxmox update procedure will probably make the web GUI unavailable

I was recently assigned to work on an older Proxmox VE system still running version 2.3, without much maintenance for the past 3y (it still runs great BTW!).

This meant updating the underlying Debian 6 (Squeeze), which has now unfortunately gone out of support, among other things.

I used the information from the official Debian documentation.

First I changed /etc/apt/sources.list as follows (old information was commented):

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian squeeze-lts main

#deb http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib

# PVE packages provided by proxmox.com
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian squeeze pve

# security updates
#deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib

I also needed to add the following in /etc/apt/apt.conf (create this file if it doesn't already exist):

Acquire::Check-Valid-Until false;

Then, as usual:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

The Proxmox VE repository is still available and I noticed there were updates from there too. In the end I verified the resulting Debian and PVE versions:

# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.10 (squeeze)
Release:        6.0.10
Codename:       squeeze

# pveversion
pve-manager/2.3/7946f1f1

A reboot was also necessary as a new kernel was part of the update, and the Proxmox GUI web interface stopped working, although all VMs remained available and working as usual.

 

[tom]

the web interface should not break, try:

> apt-get update
> apt-get install proxmox-ve-2.6.32

 

[magicfab]

the web interface should not break, try:

> apt-get update
> apt-get install proxmox-ve-2.6.32

After rebooting the Web UI was fine, sorry if I wasn't clear about that.