Step 1.) Upgrade to Debian 11 first The process to go to Debian 12 is not as smooth as 11, when trying to upgrade from Debian 10. In fact, it doesn't work directly, so you'll first need to follow this guide to update to Debian 11, reboot and come back here if successful. Step 2.) Update sources.list Update your /etc/apt/sources.list like this: deb http://........

You may have a broken apt configure that calls for snap (which is not installed if you get the error below): apt install coreutils Reading state information... Done E: Could not read response to hello message from hook [ ! -f /usr/bin/snap ] || /usr/bin/snap advise-snap --from-apt 2>/dev/null || true: Connection reset by peer E: Could not read message separator line after handshake from [ ! -f /usr/bin/snap ] || /usr/bin/snap advi........

If you get this error, it's usually because you don't have coreutils installed. -bash: expr: command not found Install coreutils and you'll be good: apt-get -y install coreutils........

In this example we install debian 10 with --variant=minbase which gives us a minimal/tiny install. Don't use variant if you want the full size install. mkdir /tmp/deb10files debootstrap --variant=minbase buster /tmp/deb10files/ Did you get an error? debootstrap --variant=minbase buster /home/theuser/VMs/deb10files/ You'll get this error if you make a directory in your home........

yum exits in the middle The problem is this VPS seems to be an OpenVZ template from HyperVM. The only way to make it work was to disable i386 packages since this was an x64 kernel. That shouldn't be necessary but it was the only way to make yum stop quitting after the first package or two. I couldn't find any issue by checking the logs either. echo y|yum install vim-minimal telnet expect jwhois net-tools slocate iptables elinks gawk L........