Updating my /etc/apt/sources.list
I have my /etc/apt/sources/list in
Git,
so upgrading from Buster to Bullseye was only matter of changing
the sources list in one
place
and running git pull on each of my machines.
Then, it was just a matter of running the same three commands I've run
for 20 year now. Debian and its apt-get is an excellent example of a
stable API:
# apt-get update
# apt-get upgrade
# apt-get dist-upgrade
Impossible to upgrade systemd
Setting up systemd (247.3-6) ...
Detected unsafe path transition /var/log → /var/log/journal during canonicalization of /var/log/journal.
Detected unsafe path transition /var/log → /var/log/journal during canonicalization of /var/log/journal.
Detected unsafe path transition /var/log → /var/log/journal during canonicalization of /var/log/journal.
Detected unsafe path transition /var/log → /var/log/journal during canonicalization of /var/log/journal/180ba41197f7404e9db24ef7ccafe02c.
Detected unsafe path transition /var/log → /var/log/journal during canonicalization of /var/log/journal/180ba41197f7404e9db24ef7ccafe02c.
Detected unsafe path transition /var/log → /var/log/journal during canonicalization of /var/log/journal/180ba41197f7404e9db24ef7ccafe02c.
Detected unsafe path transition /var/log → /var/log/journal during canonicalization of /var/log/journal/180ba41197f7404e9db24ef7ccafe02c/system.journal.
Detected unsafe path transition /var/log → /var/log/journal during canonicalization of /var/log/journal/180ba41197f7404e9db24ef7ccafe02c/system.journal.
dpkg: error processing package systemd (--configure):
installed systemd package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 73
Errors were encountered while processing:
systemd
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Subsequently, pretty much all other software upgrades failed since
most things depends on something which in turn depends on systemd
:-(
I could reproduce this error by running:
# SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug systemd-tmpfiles --create --prefix /var/log/journal
# echo $?
73
After reading through [bug
950684](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=950684), I
got a hunch the directory/ies somehow had the wrong permissions. I
checked the directories leading up to /var/log/journal and
discovered my /var/log wasn't owned by root:
# stat /
File: /
Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory
Device: 10302h/66306d Inode: 2 Links: 19
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2020-06-29 15:50:23.684265901 +0200
Modify: 2021-08-21 15:11:47.230580294 +0200
Change: 2021-08-21 15:11:47.230580294 +0200
Birth: 2020-06-29 15:46:05.000000000 +0200
# stat /var
File: /var
Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory
Device: 10302h/66306d Inode: 43253761 Links: 13
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2020-06-29 15:50:13.172265867 +0200
Modify: 2020-06-30 16:10:24.211542521 +0200
Change: 2020-06-30 16:10:24.211542521 +0200
Birth: 2020-06-29 15:46:08.512265082 +0200
# stat /var/log
File: /var/log
Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory
Device: 10302h/66306d Inode: 43253768 Links: 15
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 1000/torstein) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2020-06-29 15:50:16.596265878 +0200
Modify: 2021-08-23 12:22:38.387804831 +0200
Change: 2021-08-23 12:22:38.387804831 +0200
Birth: 2020-06-29 15:50:01.884265831 +0200
To remedy this, I changed the owner back to root:
# chown root:root /var/log
With that, apt-get dist-upgradeing systemd worked like it should
:-)
