Unsupported Failed upgrade from Debian 9 to Debian 10

[Jonners]

I am running a 3cx Debian guest on a xUbuntu (XFCE) OS PC using VirtualBox. Done this for over 10 years very successfully which included the move from the Guest being Windows to Debian about 3 years ago. It has run well all this time though the upgrade to Debian 9 took some jiggling. I had notice of the Debian upgrade on my 3CX some months ago but attempts kept failing so I left it, and now decided it was time to make it happen. The installation is standard, bar firewalls and port forwarding on the router that were recommended to me.

So when I select upgrade in the 3CX app, it logs me out and then I get the message that the backup was a success. The first part seems to work. I get a notification that the backup has worked via eMail:
"A backup of your PBX at ***.3cx.co.uk has been successfully completed. No further action is required.
Backup name: rescueBackupUpgrade.zip"

But then I get another that says the upgrade failed. "3CX attempted to update your 3CX Debian OS at ******.3cx.co.uk from Debian 9 to 10 and failed.

This may be caused by changes made to the OS after installation. The attached log file shows where the update failed.". The latter part isn't correct.

Attached is the log file I attach here. Two files one from yesterday and one today just in case.

Any ideas, please??????

 

[Agathocles Prodromou]

Hi,

The recommended way is to spin up a new instance using our Debian 10 ISO and restore 3CX rather than upgrade the existing (quite old) installation.

1. Take a full backup of 3CX
2. Shutdown your old (Debian 9) instance
3. Download the 3CX Debian 10 ISO and deploy a new VM. To download it:
   1. Log onto the Customer Portal
   2. Navigate to the ‘Downloads’ section on the left panel
   3. Click on the ‘v18’ link below the Linux icon
4. After you deployed the new VM and setup 3CX, restore your backup.

If for whatever reason that is not an option, then you may try the following on your current instance:

1. run
   wget -O- http://downloads-global.3cx.com/downloads/3cxpbx/public.key | sudo apt-key add -
2. Remove the appstreamcli package
3. Run the 3CX Debian 9 to Debian 10 upgrade from within your Management Console.

If you're going to take the second route, make sure you first take a snapshot of your VM in case you need to revert. Also always make sure you store a backup of your 3CX offsite.

 

[Jonners]

Hi,

The recommended way is to spin up a new instance using our Debian 10 ISO and restore 3CX rather than upgrade the existing (quite old) installation.

1. Take a full backup of 3CX
2. Shutdown your old (Debian 9) instance
3. Download the 3CX Debian 10 ISO and deploy a new VM. To download it:
   1. Log onto the Customer Portal
   2. Navigate to the ‘Downloads’ section on the left panel
   3. Click on the ‘v18’ link below the Linux icon
4. After you deployed the new VM and setup 3CX, restore your backup.

If for whatever reason that is not an option, then you may try the following on your current instance:

1. run
   wget -O- http://downloads-global.3cx.com/downloads/3cxpbx/public.key | sudo apt-key add -
2. Remove the appstreamcli package
3. Run the 3CX Debian 9 to Debian 10 upgrade from within your Management Console.

If you're going to take the second route, make sure you first take a snapshot of your VM in case you need to revert. Also always make sure you store a backup of your 3CX offsite.

Thank you agp
I've gone for the 2nd option for two reasons; one I don't believe in using a sledgehammer to crack a nut which also doesn't allow fixing the issue. and also, it took weeks to get the instance to work when I installed the Debian version 1st time, which I don't want to risk doing again.

So Option 2 it is. I have run the command. Went smooth enough. I used synaptic to remove the package for me and that went smoothly too. I then went into the 3CX via my browser and "Updates" and have clicked run update.

Now, I had an e.Mail immediately saying it had failed and added a log, BUT following I had another e.Mail saying the backup had been completed (not before this time as I'd expect). However, I can't log in to the 3CX instance which implies it is running in the background - I hope and think. I shall leave it for some time before making any further attempts to access it. Fingers crossed.

Best, jonners

 

[Agathocles Prodromou]

Please confirm that /etc/apt/sources.list.d/3cxpbx.list.save has been removed, otherwise the upgrade will not proceed. Also I would recommend rebooting before upgrading.

 

[Jonners]

Please confirm that /etc/apt/sources.list.d/3cxpbx.list.save has been removed, otherwise the upgrade will not proceed. Also I would recommend rebooting before upgrading.

Ah, didn't remove them. It stalled. Shall do that now. and revert. Thank you.

 

[Jonners]

OK, so tried again.
Reverted back to the saved state.

I tried to move /etc/apt/sources.list.d/3cxpbx.list.save but it does not exist. There is a /etc/apt/3cxpbx.list.save but I did not attempt to move that in case that was incorrect.

Also I tried to remove appstreamcli but doing sudo apt-get --purge remove appstreamcli failed to find it, so I tried letting the terminal find the package, but it could only find appstream. I did not remove it.

I then tried to upgrade again, but it too failed.

 

[Agathocles Prodromou]

Remove the appstream package

By the way starting fresh from our Debian 10 iso and restoring 3CX would take under 30 minutes

 

[Jonners]

Remove the appstream package

By the way starting fresh from our Debian 10 iso and restoring 3CX would take you under 30 minutes

Not my experience and working out why it fails will save others a lot of grief and help ensure future upgrades have the correct code to ensure such failings don't happen again. I have yet to have a successful 3CX OS upgrade in Debian. And when I tried from scratch it didn't take 30 minutes it took many days, plus all the tweaking to put the desktop back to how I like it. Sledgehammer to crack a nut. My approach was approved as the best way fwd by the senior administrator.

I'll have another go at the appstream tomorrow. AM about to go out.

Thank you for your help. Been great and I am sure this is nothing more, as it always is than a simple cmd line issue or tweek.

Have a great weekend

 

[Saqqara]

Good luck getting the upgrade working , as you are running a unsupported setup - VirtualBox, Debian running desktop (3cx support iso is just command line)

Any reason why you are running Debian with a desktop ?

 

[Evolute IT]

Not my experience and working out why it fails will save others a lot of grief and help ensure future upgrades have the correct code to ensure such failings don't happen again. I have yet to have a successful 3CX OS upgrade in Debian. And when I tried from scratch it didn't take 30 minutes it took many days, plus all the tweaking to put the desktop back to how I like it. Sledgehammer to crack a nut. My approach was approved as the best way fwd by the senior administrator.

I don't know what experience you have with 3CX that makes you say that but the ISO is definitely the easiest way. If you get issues, it's because you are not using supported configurations/environment.

 

[Jonners]

Good luck getting the upgrade working , as you are running a unsupported setup - VirtualBox, Debian running desktop (3cx support iso is just command line)

Any reason why you are running Debian with a desktop ?

I have been running 3CX since 2009 and have always done it on a virtual OS using VirtualBox which is a standard app in any Linux OS, my host has been Ubuntu, xUbuntu and XFCE typically.

At first, I used a hosted Windows desktop and later Debian in 2016 when came out, and always used the desktop version. No one has ever had an issue with me doing so before and has been supported by the senior admin. If it wasn't for people like me there wouldn't have been a 3CX.

I am not an engineer. I do not know code that well, just some basics. I like to see what I am doing even if it uses some extra memory and storage, it's a small price to pay for ease of use. It is about time the Debian version used the standard Debian package and allowed people who are quite capable of using an IP-PBX but not engineers to be able to do so.

Back in the day there wasn't even going to be a Linux version... Can see my comment too. I'd already been a user for some years before this:
https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/3cx-on-linux.18755/#post-101648

I was one of the first people on the planet to launch IP-telephony way back in the late 1980s, but not as an engineer, so very keen to have my own at home which 3CX has allowed me to do for some 12 years now. Yes, it says I have been a member since 2019, but this is my third account, my original ones seem to have disappeared in 2019 so I had to recreate one, good really as they were company ones and as I have retired and will be shutting down the business and domain it makes sense.

That's why.

 

[Jonners]

YIPEEEEE All working.

So the sequence seems to be

Take a snapshot of the current state and give it a name - Debian 9 pre upgrade

Run the following 3 cmds in a terminal
sudo mv /etc/apt/sources.list.d/3cxpbx.list.save /home/administration/Desktop

sudo apt-get --purge remove appstream

wget -O- http://downloads-global.3cx.com/downloads/3cxpbx/public.key | sudo apt-key add -

Take another snapshot and name it - Changes pre reboot

Reboot the "Machine" (Guest)
**Check the Software and Updates to ensure all the boxes are ticked. I found mine were not so the upgrade failed to action and had to redo the previous step***

in a terminal
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Take another Snapshot and name it - Upgraded pre Dist upgrade (I also included the cmds I'd used in the description, just in case)

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Take another Snapshot and name it - Dist upgraded pre reboot

sudo reboot

In a terminal:
sudo apt-get --purge autoremove cleans out the rubbish
hostnamectl Tells me if upgraded

So now I am running Debian 10 A few extra steps for safety, namely the creation of a lot of Snapshots, but they only take 10 seconds each and can be deleted afterwards.

For some reason, 3CX didn't seem to be installed, but simply in a terminal

sudo apt-get install 3cxpbx
and it was installed and had all my settings.

can do sudo 3CXStartServices but I didn't need it, it was already running.

I seem to have 2 BETA upgrades in the 3CX which I'll ignore.

 

[Agathocles Prodromou]

Even though you ended up with a running system, please be aware (as previously mentioned) that your setup checks every box of an unsupported one. This means you are on your own when it comes to troubleshooting/fixing this installation.

 

[Jonners]

Thank you. The only problems come from the proprietary Debian that 3CX use for the build, and that is only a problem when upgrading to major releases of the Debian OS.

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

and that is only a problem when upgrading to major releases of the Debian OS.

Not necessarily, the 3CX ISO is tailored to suit 3CXs functionality as a whole so it is NOT only to ensure compatibility with future versions and upgrade procedures. That said, the 3CX instance at hand IS in it's entirety considered an unsupported configuration meaning that we cannot guarantee normal functionality regardless of whether the scenario involves a software/OS upgrade or not.