"apt distr-upgrade" ruins headless connectivity (via SSH and NIC)

I run a headless rpi3 install of ncp 15. (I set an empty file named “ssh” in the boot dir and administer it remotely)

It had been running fine up until some time in February when I ran “apt distr-upgrade”. Upon reboot the system no longer connects via wlan0 or eth0. Not pingable and wireshark shows no activity from NIC. Unfortunately I don’t have a monitor to verify error codes.

Anyway, I tried re-imaging with raspian-lite (stretch) and running the cURL for NCP and it worked fine again until I tried doing “apt distr-upgrade”. Same behavior.

I have also tried upgrades on two other raspberry pis (another 3 and a 3B+)

I am unable to find any other examples of this with my search skills.
Can anybody help me find out why this might be happening?

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Nextcloud version 15:

Is this the first time you’ve seen this error? (N):

Steps to replicate it:

  1. sudo apt distr-upgrade
  2. ???
  3. ???