Debian 8 (Jessie) not supported in update-script

General
1

In the Running on Raspberry Pi : Node-RED page it says the minimum version of Raspbian is jessie. This is incorrect. I tried to upgrade yesterday and ran into this big problem (a non-functioning Node-RED):

This can take 20-30 minutes on the slower Pi versions - please wait.

  Stop Node-RED                       ✔
  Remove old version of Node-RED      ✔
  Remove old version of Node.js       ✔  v6
  Update Node.js LTS                  ✘   Failed to install Node.js - Exit
  Clean npm cache
  Install Node-RED core
  Move global nodes to local
  Install extra Pi nodes
  Npm rebuild existing nodes
  Add shortcut commands
  Update systemd script

Error:
	nodejs : Depends: libstdc++6 (>= 5.2) but 4.9.2-10+deb8u2 is to be installed

I am no linux expert, but after a very long frustrating battle I managed to install Node.js v10 manually (example from: GitHub - nodesource/distributions: NodeSource Node.js Binary Distributions):

	curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_10.x -o nodesource_setup.sh
	sudo bash nodesource_setup.sh
	sudo apt-get install nodejs
	sudo apt-get install build-essential

And then I edited the above update-script in such a way that the Node.js part is skipped. Finally it was able to install the latest version of Node-RED v1.2.9

I know there is an existing topic about this (Raspian Jessie not supported with latest bash script), but it is already closed, and mentions a solution of upgrading to stretch or buster, but that is really a solution for everybody, and would mean that jessie is not supported anymore.

I suggest either to remove the mentioning of support for Jessie, or change the update-script so that it recognizes this situation and uses Node.js v10 instead of v12.

Please let me know your thoughts on this proposal.

2

Not directly addressing the problem but if you just needed to upgrade (or install) node-red and leave nodejs as it was you could do
sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perms node-red
as described in the Getting Started guide.

Jessie went out of support 9 months ago, you cannot get even security updates for it any more.

3

Docs updated to say Stretch is now minimum.

1 Like
4

Thanks for you quick reply! :+1:

I know, Jessie is old, and I am working on replacing it. But for now it is very nice that I can keep it running just a little bit longer :wink:.

5

Helper scripts are nice to get you going but you are likely to grow out of them at some point I've always found.

I prefer to have native installations wherever possible and will always prefer installation via apt for OS-level apps and npm for node.js apps.

I never install node-red globally either but that is a different thread :wink:

6

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