I'm starting to think that there is something wrong with the horsea machine indeed: still not able to upgrade to lunar. Starting from jammy or from kinetic failed. #Jammy Deploying again jammy and doing do-release-upgrade again failed with ssh, with differents things after rebooting and trying the do the release upgrade (I have outputs, but I don't remember exactly at what point I did the reboot of the machine, i.e: "Missing privilege separation directory: /run/sshd" could happen after reboot, but not sure). #Kinetic So, ok... let's think is something wrong with the jammy image that is being deployed (a remote possibility, I think, but ...).... trying the upgrading from Kinetic: failed. I checked the system status before starting the upgrade and it was not degraded. It was stucked at 97% on: Setting up snapd (2.58+22.10.1) ... Installing new version of config file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20snapd.conf ... Could not execute systemctl: at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 145. Could not execute systemctl: at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 145. snapd.failure.service is a disabled or a static unit not running, not starting it. snapd.snap-repair.service is a disabled or a static unit not running, not starting it. Failed to restart snapd.mounts-pre.target: Operation refused, unit snapd.mounts-pre.target may be requested by dependenc y only (it is configured to refuse manual start/stop). See system logs and 'systemctl status snapd.mounts-pre.target' for details. system status was: │ └─unattended-upgrades.service │ ├─ 1227 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/share/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrade-shutdown --wait-for-signal │ └─11628 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/share/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrade-shutdown --wait-for-signal └─user.slice └─user-1000.slice └─session-1.scope ├─ 1856 "sshd: ubuntu [priv]" ├─ 1937 "sshd: ubuntu@pts/0" ├─ 1941 -bash ├─ 2302 sudo apt upgrade -y ├─ 2303 sudo apt upgrade -y ├─ 2304 apt upgrade -y ├─ 5750 /usr/bin/dpkg --status-fd 39 --configure --pending ├─ 5751 sh -c "(test -x /usr/lib/needrestart/dpkg-status && /usr/lib/needrestart/dpkg-status || cat > /dev/null> ├─ 5752 sh -c "(test -x /usr/lib/needrestart/dpkg-status && /usr/lib/needrestart/dpkg-status || cat > /dev/null> ├─ 5753 /bin/sh /usr/lib/needrestart/dpkg-status ├─11336 /bin/sh /var/lib/dpkg/info/snapd.postinst configure 2.57.5+22.10ubuntu0.1 ├─11501 /usr/bin/perl /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke restart snapd.aa-prompt-listener.service snapd.apparmor.servi> ├─11563 systemctl --quiet --system restart snapd.aa-prompt-listener.service snapd.apparmor.service snapd.autoim> └─11564 /bin/systemd-tty-ask-password-agent --watch After that, it failed with: Could not execute systemctl: at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 145. Setting up openssh-sftp-server (1:9.0p1-1ubuntu7.3) ... Setting up needrestart (3.6-1ubuntu0.1) ... Setting up openssh-server (1:9.0p1-1ubuntu7.3) ... rescue-ssh.target is a disabled or a static unit not running, not starting it. Could not execute systemctl: at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 145. dpkg: error processing package openssh-server (--configure): installed openssh-server package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1 Setting up bind9-dnsutils (1:9.18.12-0ubuntu0.22.10.2) ... Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.36-0ubuntu4) ... Processing triggers for rsyslog (8.2208.0-1ubuntu2) ... Processing triggers for ufw (0.36.1-4build1) ... Processing triggers for man-db (2.10.2-2) ... Processing triggers for dbus (1.14.0-2ubuntu3) ... Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.140ubuntu17) ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.19.0-46-generic Processing triggers for ca-certificates (20230311ubuntu0.22.10.1) ... Updating certificates in /etc/ssl/certs... 0 added, 0 removed; done. Running hooks in /etc/ca-certificates/update.d... done. Errors were encountered while processing: openssh-server needrestart is being skipped since dpkg has failed E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) System status after that was: ubuntu@node-horsea:~$ systemctl status -l Failed to read server status: Connection timed out ubuntu@node-horsea:~$ systemctl status -l ● node-horsea State: degraded Units: 425 loaded (incl. loaded aliases) Jobs: 1 queued Failed: 7 units Since: Thu 2023-07-27 10:48:27 UTC; 18min ago systemd: 251.4-1ubuntu7.3 CGroup: / ├─init.scope │ └─1 /lib/systemd/systemd --- --system --deserialize 22 ├─system.slice │ ├─cron.service │ │ └─1138 /usr/sbin/cron -f -P │ ├─dbus.service │ │ ├─1139 @dbus-daemon --system --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd-activation --syslog-only │ │ └─6714 @dbus-daemon --system --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd-activation --syslog-only │ ├─irqbalance.service │ │ ├─1145 /usr/sbin/irqbalance --foreground │ │ └─6719 /usr/sbin/irqbalance --foreground │ ├─multipathd.service │ │ └─6654 /sbin/multipathd -d -s │ ├─packagekit.service │ │ └─2204 /usr/libexec/packagekitd │ ├─polkit.service │ │ └─2208 /usr/libexec/polkitd --no-debug │ ├─rsyslog.service │ │ └─12184 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n -iNONE │ ├─snapd.service │ │ ├─ 1150 /usr/lib/snapd/snapd │ │ └─23845 /usr/lib/snapd/snapd │ ├─ssh.service │ │ ├─ 1849 "sshd: /usr/sbin/sshd -D [listener] 0 of 10-100 startups" │ │ ├─11762 "sshd: ubuntu [priv]" │ │ ├─11841 "sshd: ubuntu@pts/3" │ │ ├─11842 -bash │ │ ├─23869 systemctl status -l │ │ └─23870 less │ ├─system-getty.slice │ │ └─