Upgrade from 1.1 to 2.x

Introduction

Proxmox Backup Server 2.x is based on a new major version of Debian. You should plan the upgrade carefully, make and verify backups before beginning, and test extensively. Depending on the existing configuration, several manual steps — including some downtime — may be required.

Note: A valid and tested backup is always required before starting the upgrade process. Test the backup beforehand in a test lab setup.

In case the system is customized and/or uses additional packages or any other third party repositories/packages, ensure those packages are also upgraded to and compatible with Debian Bullseye.

In-place Upgrade

Preconditions

Perform these actions via console or SSH. If you use SSH, you should use a terminal multiplexer (for example, tmux or screen) to ensure the upgrade can continue even if the SSH connection gets interrupted.

Do not carry out the upgrade via the web-interface (GUI) console, as this will get interrupted during the upgrade.

• Upgrade to the latest version of Proxmox Backup Server 1.1:

apt update
apt dist-upgrade
# verify version:
proxmox-backup-manager versions
proxmox-backup-server 1.1.11-1 running version: 1.1.11 (or higher)

• Make a backup of /etc/proxmox-backup to ensure that in the worst case, any relevant configuration can be recovered:

tar czf "pbs1-etc-backup-$(date -I).tar.gz" -C "/etc" "proxmox-backup"

• Ensure that you have at least 4 GiB free disk space on the root mount point:

df -h /

In-place upgrades are carried out via APT. Familiarity with APT is required to proceed with this upgrade mechanism.

Actions step-by-step

Before starting the upgrade process, ensure that your Proxmox Backup Server 1.x host is up-to-date. If you use a Linux bridge setup on your server, please also refer to the Proxmox VE Upgrade Guide's section regarding possible issues.

Update the configured APT repositories

Change the apt sources to Bullseye - see Package Repositories. Update all Debian repository entries to Bullseye.

sed -i 's/buster\/updates/bullseye-security/g;s/buster/bullseye/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

Note that for bullseye, Debian changed its security update repository from deb http://security.debian.org buster/updates main to deb http://security.debian.org bullseye-security main for more consistency. The above command accounts for this change already.

Update the enterprise repository to bullseye:

echo "deb https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/pbs bullseye pbs-enterprise" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pbs-enterprise.list

If you have other PBS repositories configured, you can run the below command to update them:

sed -i 's/buster/bullseye/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pbs-repo.list

Make sure to also edit all the extra files you added in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ to Bullseye accordingly.

Finally, update the repositories' package index:

apt update

Note that this command does not start the upgrade itself, it only refreshes the package index and must not return any error.

Stop services before upgrade

This is only necessary if you use tape backup, as the lock file's path has been changed. Alternatively, you can also ensure that no tape-related backup or restore jobs are running during the upgrade.

Note that stopping the services will abort all running tasks (backup, restore, garbage-collect, etc.), so make sure none is active.

systemctl stop proxmox-backup-proxy.service proxmox-backup.service

Upgrade the system

Note that the time required for finishing this step heavily depends on the system's performance, especially the root filesystem's IOPS and bandwidth. A slow spinner can take up to 60 minutes or more, while for a high-performance server with SSD storage, the dist-upgrade can be finished in 5 minutes. While the packages are being upgraded certain operations and requests to the API might fail (for example logging in as system user in the pam realm)

To get the initial set of upgraded packages, run:

apt update
apt dist-upgrade

During the above step, you may be asked to approve some new packages, that want to replace certain configuration files. These are not relevant to the Proxmox Backup Server upgrade, so you can choose what's most appropriate for your setup.

If the command exits successfully, you can reboot the system in order to enable the new kernel.

systemctl reboot

Following the Proxmox Backup Server upgrade

Start services again, if you stopped them for the upgrade:

systemctl start proxmox-backup-proxy.service proxmox-backup.service

Check that the statuses of the main services are active (running)

systemctl status proxmox-backup-proxy.service proxmox-backup.service

Potential issues

General

As a Debian based Distribution, Proxmox Backup Server is affected by most issues and changes affecting Debian. Thus, make sure to read the Upgrade specific issues for bullseye