Last update unexpectedly broke Etherpad (due to old plugins)

[perelin]

So, something broke the Etherpad Instance on my Cloudron. Looks like the last update introduced a breaking change...

Updated to express 5.0.0. This is a major update to express that brings a lot of improvements and fixes. Please update all your plugins to the latest version to ensure compatibility. A lot changed in the route matching, and thus old plugins will throw errors and crash Etherpad.

Currently identifying what plugins are at fault.

Did nobody else run into this? I have not seen any announcement upfront that there will be breaking changes. Did I miss them?

[perelin]

So, Im trying to follow the Troubleshoot guide in the Etherpad Cloudron docs https://docs.cloudron.io/packages/etherpad/#troubleshooting

But it seems I cant uninstall packages like I should. Any ideas?

root@f0afb254-3680-4818-a073-b7a69bdf5357:/app/code# npm ls 2> /dev/null | grep ep_
└── ep_etherpad-lite@2.5.1 invalid: "workspace:./src" from the root project -> ./src

root@f0afb254-3680-4818-a073-b7a69bdf5357:/app/code# cd src/

root@f0afb254-3680-4818-a073-b7a69bdf5357:/app/code/src# npm ls 2> /dev/null | grep ep_
ep_etherpad-lite@2.5.1 /app/code/src
├── ep_align@10.0.2 extraneous -> ./plugin_packages/.versions/ep_align@10.0.2
├── ep_comments_page@10.0.4 extraneous -> ./plugin_packages/.versions/ep_comments_page@10.0.4
├── ep_embedded_hyperlinks2@1.2.4 extraneous -> ./plugin_packages/.versions/ep_embedded_hyperlinks2@1.2.4
├── ep_font_color@0.0.89 extraneous -> ./plugin_packages/.versions/ep_font_color@0.0.89
├── ep_guest@1.0.37 extraneous -> ./plugin_packages/.versions/ep_guest@1.0.37
├── ep_headings2@0.2.68 extraneous -> ./plugin_packages/.versions/ep_headings2@0.2.68
├── ep_markdown@10.0.1 extraneous -> ./plugin_packages/.versions/ep_markdown@10.0.1
├── ep_openid_connect@3.0.13 extraneous -> ./plugin_packages/.versions/ep_openid_connect@3.0.13
├── ep_stable_authorid@1.0.5 extraneous -> ./plugin_packages/.versions/ep_stable_authorid@1.0.5
├── ep_user_displayname@1.0.7 extraneous -> ./plugin_packages/.versions/ep_user_displayname@1.0.7

root@f0afb254-3680-4818-a073-b7a69bdf5357:/app/code/src# npm rm ep_markdown
npm error code 127
npm error path /app/code/node_modules/.pnpm/jsdom@27.0.0_postcss@8.5.6/node_modules/jsdom
npm error command failed
npm error command sh -c npm-run-all prepare:*
npm error sh: 1: npm-run-all: not found
npm error A complete log of this run can be found in: /root/.npm/_logs/2025-10-20T15_30_26_128Z-debug-0.log

[perelin]

So, the actual fix was to update the version numbers in /app/data/data/installed_plugins.json through the File Manager. These were the offending versions.

ep_markdown now at 10.0.1 (was 1.0.2)
ep_comments_page now at 10.0.4 (was 1.0.38)
ep_etherpad-lite now at 2.5.1 (was 2.3.0)

Claude was quite helpful with everything

/ticket

[nebulon]

This should have been fixed with 4.4.1 where we now pin all shipped plugins https://git.cloudron.io/packages/etherpad-lite-app/-/blob/master/start.sh?ref_type=heads#L77

Unfortunately we had an intermediate 4.4.0 release, which is by now reverted, but maybe your app is/was on that one?

[robi]

This seems like the app should validate and update package versions of the plugins to match, no?

Etheroad devs don’t expect the plugins to stay and the app to update on its own.

[nebulon]

Yes, so with the plugin version pinning we can at least ensure etherpad and plugins work fine together since they are baked into the app package during build time.

[robi]

@nebulon yes, Howe once users start diverging from the default build there is no mechanism to keep them in sync across app upgrades.