Which instructions did you use to install Certbot?
It's weird that you've ended up with a fairly old .dev0 (--edge) version while using snaps. At the very least, it should have automatically upgraded you to 1.10.0.dev0 if you were using the edge channel.
Running that command gives me the following output:
error: snap "certbot" is not available on stable but is available to install on the following
channels:
edge snap refresh --edge certbot
Please be mindful pre-release channels may include features not completely tested or
implemented. Get more information with 'snap info certbot'.
That’s all probably a bit too technical for me to answer straight. I’ve run your commands, and here’s the results:
$ systemd-detect-virt
qemu
$ uname -a
Linux robin 5.8.3-x86_64-linode137 #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Aug 24 14:50:33 EDT 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="16.04.7 LTS (Xenial Xerus)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 16.04.7 LTS"
VERSION_ID="16.04"
HOME_URL="http://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
VERSION_CODENAME=xenial
UBUNTU_CODENAME=xenial
$ snap version
snap 2.47.1
snapd 2.47.1
series 16
ubuntu 16.04
kernel 5.8.3-x86_64-linode137
Does that clarify anything? I guess qemu is relevant. There’s a good chance there’s some cruft from running upgrades a month ago, but I’m not the person to know how to solve or avoid that. If necessary, I can also ask someone from Linode to help with that part, but my primary concern is not having my certs expire.
After diving into the snapd code, my new suspicion is that you have snapd:i386 installed, which makes snap search for a 32-bit version of Certbot.
I can appreciate this, and thanks for being so cooperative with my questions.
If it comes down to the wire, you can still install python-certbot-apache from apt (removing the snap) and renew your existing certificates using that.
I think you probably upgraded from Ubuntu 14.04 at some point (which is why you have Linode's weird 5.8.3 kernel) and then on top of that, your dpkg architecture got changed to i386. Or perhaps it was always that for some reason ... but I don't see how.
This is above my level of expertise, sorry.
A very optimistic attempt to "fix this" would be:
sudo apt install snapd:amd64
but I think it's unlikely to actually work because it depends on a lot of core system packages which are probably currently installed as i386 .
Okay! Then I’ll try to bridge the gap with Python and hope that solves it – it at least will abstract it away from system packages, which should be helpful. You are correct that I upgraded from 14.04, and let me tell you, there were plenty of other problems when I did. So anything that can avoid that mess for now is a good idea.
One day I might just clean house, but… who wants to do that? Anyway. Thanks a lot! You’ve given me an understanding and an alternative.
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