Upgrading Wodby servers from Debian 9 to 11

 

TL;DR

IMPORTANT: Before upgrading to the next major version of an OS, the docs recommend to:

  1. Stop kube and docker services at first
  2. Perform the upgrade
  3. Reboot
  4. Make sure Docker was not installed from packages (we require a specific version that we manually install during server connection)
  5. Check iptables version via iptables --version. If it's 1.8.2 or newer switch it to legacy mode: update-alternatives --set iptables /usr/sbin/iptables-legacy
  6. Make sure cgroup2 disabled

Background

We use the Wodby service to effortlessly provision and deploy our web applications. It allows you to bring your own servers and deploy your own stacks using docker containers. Out of the box they provide several popular stacks such as Drupal and Wordpress.

The Docs

While performing some maintenance I realised that one of my servers was running Debian 9 and wanted to upgrade it the recommended Debian 11. I dove straight into it and ran into some issues. Chingis at Wodby quickly helped me out and pointed me to some docs. I've pasted those instructions and links to the docs at the start of this article.

Challenges and resolutions

After upgrading from Debian 9 to 10 my server remained connected but I could no longer access of my sites. Switching iptables to legacy mode resolved this.

Upgrading from 10 to 11, my server was no longer connected to Wodby and my sites were not accessible. Disabling cgroup2 resolved the issue.

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