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docs: Debian 13 is verified, and is the better default

The runbook said Debian 12 because that is what had been tested, which is habit
rather than a reason. Debian 13 gives a longer support runway and a newer git,
and the one plausible difference — Caddy's apt repository — turns out to be
codename-independent.

Verified rather than assumed: install.sh runs to completion on Debian 13 in a
container, Caddy 2.11.4 installs, the service user is created with nologin, and
the binary starts as that user. Both 12 and 13 are now known good.

Also records why not to take the blueprint Lightsail pre-selects: Amazon Linux
is dnf-based, and the installer stops with a clear message rather than
half-installing.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JZwc7URWKVhkAuRTWiDmjA
JamesPatrickGill authored 1 day agoparent7fb0b5eBrowse files59d0001368c67fcd3e90f6553e6ae898cbbb2458

1 file changed+7 −1

plans/runbook.md+7 −1View file
@@ -257,12 +257,18 @@ and the place everyone else downloads Steid from.
257257
258258 ### Order matters
259259
260−1. **Provision — AWS Lightsail**, Debian 12 blueprint. Lightsail rather than EC2
260+1. **Provision — AWS Lightsail**, **Debian 13** blueprint (12 also works). Lightsail rather than EC2
261261 deliberately: it *is* AWS's VPS product, where EC2 makes you assemble the same box out
262262 of a VPC, security groups, an EBS volume and an Elastic IP, with per-GB egress on top.
263263 Either architecture works — releases are built for `x86_64` and `aarch64`, and
264264 `install.sh` picks between them from `uname -m`, so a Graviton instance is fine.
265265
266+ **Not Amazon Linux**, which Lightsail pre-selects: `install.sh` is Debian-family, and
267+ it stops with a clear message on anything without `apt-get` rather than half-installing.
268+ Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 work too. Debian 13 and 12 are both verified end to end in a
269+ container — including that Caddy installs, since its apt repository URL is
270+ codename-independent and that was the only plausible difference between them.
271+
266272 Three Lightsail-specific things, each of which breaks the deployment silently if
267273 missed:
268274