What type of hardware are you using: VPS bought online
What YunoHost version are you running: 12.04.14
How are you able to access your server: SSH
Other(?)
Describe your issue
For unknown reasons, my VPS with Debian 12 no longer boots. It contains a virtual BTRFS partition as rootfs and also boot. This virtual disk is composed of two drives (merged from /dev/vda1 and /dev/vdb1). When booting, I receive the following error messages:
error: no embedding supported
loading initial ramdisk …
error: you need to load the kernel first.
Then I end up back in GRUB and can choose which kernel I want to boot. If I take an older one, for example 6.1.0-30, I get the following error message:
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown block(0,0)
If I start kernel 6.1.0-28, I get the following error messages:
mount: mounting /dev on /root/dev/ failed: no such file or directory
mount: mounting /run on /root/dev failed: no such file or directory
run-nit: can’t execute /sbin/init: no such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn’t have requested /sbin/init
run-init: can’t execute /bin/sh: no such file or directory
no init found. Try passing init=bootarg.
And then I end up in a BusyBox with an initramfs prompt.
Since I have no idea what to do with that, I booted into the live rescue GRML linux provided by hoster Netcup and tried my luck here, aided by Mistral and Claude.
What I’ve tried so far
Since I suspected a failed update (maybe one I recently initiated via webadmin?), it stood to reason that dpkg --configure -a would fix it. So I chrooted into the system, having to jump through a few hoops with mount-binding all necessary partitions. I finally managed to do that. However, the system as it is right now will not accept any kind of update since whenever I try to install anything or update anything a variation of the following occurs:
root@:/# dpkg --configure -a
Setting up yunohost (12.0.14) …
Regenerating configuration, this might take a while…
Warning: The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Running in chroot, ignoring command ‘restart’
Error: Service slapd is not running but is required to perform this action … You can try to investigate what’s happening with ‘systemctl status slapd’
dpkg: error processing package yunohost (–configure):
installed yunohost package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
yunohost
Output of systemctl status slapd is of course not super helpful:
Running in chroot, ignoring command 'status'
So anyway, apparently since slapd is down and I can’t get it to start again, every time I try to install something the system checks whether chroot is allowed to do that and the answer is “I don’t know since LDAP is down” and so … I don’t know what to do.
Forcing something to happen unfortunately does not work:
root@:/# dpkg --configure -a --force-all
Setting up yunohost (12.0.14) …
Regenerating configuration, this might take a while…
Warning: The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Running in chroot, ignoring command ‘restart’
Error: Service slapd is not running but is required to perform this action … You can try to investigate what’s happening with ‘systemctl status slapd’
dpkg: error processing package yunohost (–configure):
installed yunohost package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
yunohost
I’ve tried a bunch of things to temporarily disable LDAP/slapd in order to fix broken/missing packages, but nothing works and I’m running out of ideas.
If you have any, I’m really curious to hear them and if all else fails: how do I backup and export my data?
Because yunohost commands also fail :-/
root@:/# yunohost backup create
Warning: WARNING The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Warning: Running in chroot, ignoring command ‘restart’
Warning: ERROR Service slapd is not running but is required to perform this action … You can try to investigate what’s happening with ‘systemctl status slapd’
Error: Could not run script: /usr/share/yunohost/hooks/backup/50-conf_manually_modified_files
Error: Could not backup the ‘conf_manually_modified_files’ system part
Info: Collecting files to be backed up for onlyoffice…
Info: Declaring files to be backed up…
Info: Backing up the PostgreSQL database…
Warning: sudo: unable to resolve host v2202411237932297310: Name or service not known
Warning: pg_dump: error: connection to server on socket “/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432” failed: No such file or directory
Warning: Is the server running locally and accepting connections on that socket?
Error: Could not back up onlyoffice
Info: Collecting files to be backed up for calibreweb…
Info: Declaring files to be backed up…
Info: Backup script completed for calibreweb. (YunoHost will then actually copy those files to the archive).
Warning: The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Running in chroot, ignoring command ‘restart’
Error: Could not back up calibreweb
Info: Collecting files to be backed up for wordpress…
Info: Declaring files to be backed up…
Info: Backing up the MySQL database…
Warning: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can’t connect to local server through socket ‘/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock’ (2)
Warning: mysqldump: Character set ‘’ is not a compiled character set and is not specified in the ‘/usr/share/mysql/charsets/Index.xml’ file
Error: Could not back up wordpress
Info: Collecting files to be backed up for linkwarden…
Info: Backing up the PostgreSQL database…
Warning: sudo: unable to resolve host v2202411237932297310: Name or service not known
Warning: pg_dump: error: connection to server on socket “/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432” failed: No such file or directory
Warning: Is the server running locally and accepting connections on that socket?
Error: Could not back up linkwarden
Info: Collecting files to be backed up for nextcloud…
Info: Declaring files to be backed up…
Info: Backing up the MySQL database…
Warning: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can’t connect to local server through socket ‘/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock’ (2)
Warning: mysqldump: Character set ‘’ is not a compiled character set and is not specified in the ‘/usr/share/mysql/charsets/Index.xml’ file
Error: Could not back up nextcloud
Info: Creating a backup archive from the collected files…
Info: The archive will contain about 360.4MB of data.
Warning: The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Running in chroot, ignoring command ‘restart’
Warning: The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Running in chroot, ignoring command ‘restart’
Success! Backup created: 20250413-171253
name: 20250413-171253
results:
apps:
calibreweb: Error
linkwarden: Error
nextcloud: Error
onlyoffice: Error
wordpress: Error
system:
conf_ldap: Success
conf_manually_modified_files: Error
conf_ynh_certs: Success
conf_ynh_settings: Success
data_home: Success
data_mail: Success
data_multimedia: Success
size: 377913748
At this point, I’d like to restore the system, but I’ll settle for getting my Nextcloud data out in a way that’ll make it easy to restore it after nuke and rebuild the system.
Share relevant logs or error messages
Info: Fetching available upgrades for system packages…
Info: Updating application catalog…
Success! The application catalog has been updated!
Warning: The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Running in chroot, ignoring command 'restart'
Error: Failed to read info for calibreweb : Service slapd is not running but is required to perform this action ... You can try to investigate what's happening with 'systemctl status slapd'
Warning: The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Running in chroot, ignoring command 'restart'
Error: Failed to read info for linkwarden : Service slapd is not running but is required to perform this action ... You can try to investigate what's happening with 'systemctl status slapd'
Warning: The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Running in chroot, ignoring command 'restart'
Error: Failed to read info for nextcloud : Service slapd is not running but is required to perform this action ... You can try to investigate what's happening with 'systemctl status slapd'
Warning: The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Running in chroot, ignoring command 'restart'
Error: Failed to read info for onlyoffice : Service slapd is not running but is required to perform this action ... You can try to investigate what's happening with 'systemctl status slapd'
Warning: The LDAP service is down, attempt to restart it…
Running in chroot, ignoring command 'restart'
Error: Failed to read info for wordpress : Service slapd is not running but is required to perform this action ... You can try to investigate what's happening with 'systemctl status slapd'
Info: Nothing to do. Everything is already up-to-date.
apps:
important_yunohost_upgrade: False
pending_migrations:
system: