Question Moodle/MariaDB/mysql update hell

[DoctorG]

I have moodle 3.8x running. The update breaks since my database is not up to date. It is mariadb 10.0.38. Plesk updates offered Obsidian 8.11 #3.
Moodle and mariadb are supported from plesk, as far as I read. And I installed all this via plesk.

Now moodle updates are interrupted since it wants a higher mariadb/mysql version than 10.0.
With Obsidian mariadb 10.3 would be supported. Nice. But how do I get this update from 10.0 to 10.3?

I read endless recipes about apt, apt-get, dist, dpkg, sources-list, gpg and other trash since 2 days and nothing works.
How can mariadb updated to the supported version 10.3?

Thanks

 

[learning_curve]

@DoctorG
 How to upgrade MySQL 5.5 to 5.6/5.7 or MariaDB 5.5 to 10.0/10.1/10.2/10.3 on Linux?
Plus all of the comments that are on that page

 

[DoctorG]

Yep, I have seen this. But It seems it doesn't apply.

First red box says:
Warning: MariaDB 10.3 is supported starting from Plesk Obsidian. Previous versions (Onyx and older) do not support MariaDB 10.3 and there are no plans to implement it currently.

Nice - but in this state the update from Onyx to Obsidian left me yesterday. I expected plesk to keep a plesk based system in a supported manner as long as I click a plesk given button. Now I have Obsidian (... why not ...) but a database in an unsupported state and broken moodle installation with 3.9 php files that expects MariaDB 10.3 - what i liked to have.

And I wasted 2 days making any use of this and lots of others tutorials.
Just the first line
# service mariadb stop
delivered:
Failed to stop mariadb.service: Unit mariadb.service not loaded.

 

[DoctorG]

But let's keep in a good mood and try next line:
# curl -sS https://downloads.mariadb.com/MariaDB/mariadb_repo_setup | sudo bash -s -- --mariadb-server-version=mariadb-10.2

delivers:
[info] Repository file successfully written to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mariadb.list
[info] Adding trusted package signing keys...
[info] Running apt-get update...
W: Failed to fetch http://downloads.mariadb.com/MaxScale/2.4/debian/dists/jessie/main/binary-amd64/Packages HttpError404
W: Failed to fetch http://downloads.mariadb.com/MaxScale/2.4/debian/dists/jessie/main/binary-i386/Packages HttpError404
E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
[error] Failed to add trusted package signing keys

 

[learning_curve]

@DoctorG Can't comment on the specific issues you've shown as we don't run Debian sorry, but if you have full backups of your server, taken prior to your upgrade to Obsidian, then if desired, you could try the complete process again, but with some slight differences, in terms of upgrading Maria DB to its various releases and when etc. Looking back at out own progress path with Plesk and Maria DB for reference as an example...

We ran Onyx (both versions 17.5.53 and then 17.8.11) and sucessfully upgraded to Maria DB 10.2.* whilst we were using Onyx with no problems. We used the Plesk article that is linked post #2 above to do that.

We took complete server snap shots, in case there were issues when we first upgraded from Onyx 17.8.11 to Obsidian 18.0.19. There were. So we reverted back to Onyx 17.8.11 for about 4 weeks. Those issues were overcome with the Obsidian release 18.0.20 GA (extensively tested first and having full server snap shots as the recovery option) so this time, we upgraded to Obsidian, without any of the previous issues still being present.

Having done that, we then upgraded from Maria 10.2.* to Maria DB to 10.3.* without issues, again using the Plesk article that is linked post #2 above to do that.

Since changing to Obsidian 18.0.20 GA, Plesk has been much better and far more adaptive to use (for us). There are still issues (as with any software package e.g. Obsidian still not supporting the later versions of Maria DB for example...) but overall, we've no real big complaints, about using Obsidian, so far.

 

[DoctorG]

Thanks for this.
I applied a backup. I made it back to Onyx. And I am stuck exactly like yesterday.
Just the first update instruction leads to:
[...]
Ign Index of / jessie/all Translation-en
Ign Index of / jessie/all Translation-en
Err Index of / jessie/all amd64 Packages
404 Not Found
Err Index of / jessie/all i386 Packages
404 Not Found
Err Index of / jessie/all amd64 Packages
404 Not Found
Err Index of / jessie/all i386 Packages
404 Not Found
W: Failed to fetch http://autoinstall.plesk.com/PHP72_17/dists/jessie/all/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://autoinstall.plesk.com/PHP72_17/dists/jessie/all/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://autoinstall.plesk.com/PHP73_17/dists/jessie/all/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://autoinstall.plesk.com/PHP73_17/dists/jessie/all/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found

As I found some debian-servers was moved because of some end of support (WHY ON EARTH NOT LEAVE THEM AT LEAST????). I remember some years ago with wheezy I lost another fine running server this way.

The next command >> apt-get upgrade mysql-server ... delivers another mess:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
mariadb-server : Depends: mariadb-server-10.0 (>= 10.0.38-0+deb8u1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

Again I search for hours and hours for any resolution. Deeper and deeper I dive in any mariaDB/mysql/apt/dpkg manuals. Exactly what I did NOT want and why I used a shell like plesk around it. Outer force comes from the moodle installation that automatically installed their update stuff. So I cannot access this system that waits for a higher DB version.

 

[learning_curve]

Thanks for this.
I applied a backup. I made it back to Onyx. And I am stuck exactly like yesterday.
< Snip>
Deeper and deeper I dive in any mariaDB/mysql/apt/dpkg manuals. Exactly what I did NOT want and why I used a shell like plesk around it. Outer force comes from the moodle installation that automatically installed their update stuff. So I cannot access this system that waits for a higher DB version.

Again can't comment on the Debian specific errors you've posted, but if understood correcty from your post, you can sucessfully restore back to Onyx / old version of MariaDB without any problems? If that's corect, two things spring to mind:

Why can't you disable Moodle and upgrade Maria DB to 10.2.* / Then upgrade Plesk to Obsidian / Then upgrade Maria DB to 10.3.* / Then finally enable & upgrade Moodle?

The second point being, if you can do all of that, but then still get specific Debain / Maria DB errors, why can't you either A) post the latest error set in the comments section of the Plesk page thats included in post #2 or B) if you want a much faster response, raise a Plesk support ticket?

In theory, in the interim, you could continue (having restored from the backups again) using Onyx / old version of MariaDB / old version of Moodle - Not ideal but bareable! Or is there's something we've not seen / misunderstood?

 

[DoctorG]

Why can't you disable Moodle and upgrade Maria DB to 10.2.* / Then upgrade Plesk to Obsidian / Then upgrade Maria DB to 10.3.* / Then finally enable & upgrade Moodle?

That's what I tried. I could go back. But it happened the same thing like with Obsidian. The Debian sources are gone to some other serverplace since they are out of support (since July 2020 as it looks). I don't find any valid source.list file. I looked the last days for any working description that could allow the update from MariaDB 10.0.x to anything with at least 10.1 and then 10.2 etc. StackExchange, UnixExchange, Plesk Forum ... lot's of Guys with similar problems. Several hints. Nothing working.

The moodle is lost since it did update to 3.91 that expects some MariaDB higher than 10.2.0. It says it won't let me in because of a "mixed PHP file structure". That's correct - I see the 3.91 files instead of 3.8x files. But here my Plesk backup only reaches 14 days. The automatic Moodle update was around 3 weeks ago. And that's where I setup a complete new server yesterday and will reinstall everything new what ran there. Time consuming but faster than investing further 3 days without any success.

Nevertheless I am a little disappointed from Plesk that they let users run into this knife. As long as I don't do nerdy thing I expected being under the umbrella of something with buttons and GUIs. In other words: I see that there is a double hit from the Debian and the Moodle changes, yes. But keeping everything running what they claim to be supported should be their job, testing etc. - not mine.
After reinstalling a fresh system w. newest plesk supported systems the same **** started! Ubuntu 18.04 and Obsidian with MariaDB 10.1! At least with this constellation the given command lines worked.

Thanks for your hints!