network manager fails on upgrade from Debian Jessie to Stretch

jimg · July 3, 2017

I have been using Debian Jessie on an Orange Pi Plus 2e, but decided to upgrade to Stretch so I could install Chromium (which isn't in the Jessie repositories).

I substituted 'stretch' for 'jessie' in /etc/apt/sources.list, then did:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Everything went OK, until it hung while reconfiguring network manger. I restarted and re-ran sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. Everything else appeared to install OK except network-manager (which is shown as installed but half-configured) and network-manager gnome (which is shown as unpacked and not configured),

If I try to fix network-manager using dpkg, this is what i get:

$ sudo dpkg --configure network-manager
Setting up network-manager (1.6.2-3) ...
Job for NetworkManager.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status NetworkManager.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript network-manager, action "restart" failed.
● NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2017-07-03 11:20:42 CDT; 50ms ago
     Docs: man:NetworkManager(8)
  Process: 4100 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon (code=exited, status=226/NAMESPACE)
 Main PID: 4100 (code=exited, status=226/NAMESPACE)

Jul 03 11:20:42 orangepiplus2e systemd[1]: NetworkManager.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jul 03 11:20:42 orangepiplus2e systemd[1]: NetworkManager.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
dpkg: error processing package network-manager (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 network-manager

Here are the systemd error logs:

$ systemctl status NetworkManager.service
● NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2017-07-03 11:35:20 CDT; 10s ago
     Docs: man:NetworkManager(8)
  Process: 4301 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon (code=exited, status=226/NAMESPACE)
 Main PID: 4301 (code=exited, status=226/NAMESPACE)
$ sudo journalctl -xe
-- Subject: Unit NetworkManager.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
--
-- Unit NetworkManager.service has failed.
--
-- The result is failed.
Jul 03 11:35:20 orangepiplus2e systemd[1]: NetworkManager.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jul 03 11:35:20 orangepiplus2e systemd[1]: NetworkManager.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jul 03 11:35:20 orangepiplus2e systemd[1]: NetworkManager.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Jul 03 11:35:20 orangepiplus2e systemd[1]: Stopped Network Manager.
-- Subject: Unit NetworkManager.service has finished shutting down
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
--
-- Unit NetworkManager.service has finished shutting down.
Jul 03 11:35:20 orangepiplus2e systemd[1]: NetworkManager.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Jul 03 11:35:20 orangepiplus2e systemd[1]: Failed to start Network Manager.
-- Subject: Unit NetworkManager.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
--
-- Unit NetworkManager.service has failed.
--
-- The result is failed.
Jul 03 11:35:20 orangepiplus2e systemd[1]: NetworkManager.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jul 03 11:35:20 orangepiplus2e systemd[1]: NetworkManager.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jul 03 11:35:58 orangepiplus2e sudo[4307]:      jim : TTY=pts/1 ; PWD=/home/jim ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/journalctl -xe
Jul 03 11:35:58 orangepiplus2e sudo[4307]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by jim(uid=0)

zador.blood.stained · July 3, 2017

Legacy or mainline kernel?

jimg · July 3, 2017

Legacy

zador.blood.stained · July 3, 2017

Just now, jimg said:

Legacy

Legacy 3.4 is too old to use in Stretch images, so upgrading to Stretch will not be supported and there won't be Stretch based Armbian images with the legacy kernel.

jimg · July 3, 2017

What are the incompatibilites between the legacy kernel and Stretch? Just curious...

Will there every be a mainline kernel version developed for Stretch, or will Armbian no longer support Debian?

zador.blood.stained · July 3, 2017

11 minutes ago, jimg said:

What are the incompatibilites between the legacy kernel and Stretch? Just curious...

Minimum kernel version and all new kernel features required by systemd and udev. In your case NM fails to start because namespaces and/or cgroups are not available. It is (in this case) a security enhancement which can be disabled/bypassed for different services (including NM) but I'm sure that we will rather not provide legacy Stretch images at all than try to bypass and lower the system security measures.

11 minutes ago, jimg said:

Will there every be a mainline kernel version developed for Stretch, or will Armbian no longer support Debian?

https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix

Due to some critical features currently missing in mainline we don't provide supported images with mainline kernel for H3 based boards. While mainline is possible to use, it is provided with no support only for experts and experienced users.

jimg · July 3, 2017

That seems reasonable. Thanks for all your help. You've saved me lots of time.

giri@nwrk.biz · July 3, 2017

As workaround you can try to use wicd instead of network manager, I can confirm that wicd is working fine on stretch with legacy kernel. (If you really need stretch for whatever reason)

jimg · July 31, 2017

Quote

As workaround you can try to use wicd instead of network manager, I can confirm that wicd is working fine on stretch with legacy kernel. (If you really need stretch for whatever reason)

Could you explain what you did to get wicd to work? Do you have any special settings in /etc/network or /etc/wicd?

I'm trying to connect to an access point over wireless using a WEP2 passphrase, but every time I attempt to connect I get "bad password". I can't connect to the internet over a wired connection, either, just to machines on the local LAN. (I'm guessing the latter issue is a DHCP setting problem.)

ludo37 · September 27, 2017

i have the same problem on my OrangePI Plus

XTL · March 30, 2018

I always just use systemd (systemd-networkd and wpa-supplicant) on all my Debian boxes and it works great. NTP is also built in. It's not the most intuitive setup (arch wiki pages are brilliant, as always), but I like the simplicity and integration and not needing NM, wicd, any of the several slightly different dhcp clients or ntpd.