upgrade stretch to buster on armel fails

[grumpy@mailfence.com]

i have a device that runs stretch armel
if i change my repos to buster
i do apt clean all, apt update, apt install systemd
when systemd installs it fails to start and i get a series of timeouts
when i reboot i get

Begin: Running /scripts/init-bottom ... Begin: Stopping dropbear ... done.
[   41.330911] systemd[1]: Failed to determine whether /sys is a mount point: Bad file descriptor
[   41.339709] systemd[1]: Failed to determine whether /proc is a mount point: Bad file descriptor
[   41.348525] systemd[1]: Failed to determine whether /dev is a mount point: Bad file descriptor
[!!!!!! systemd[1]: Freezing execution.
[0m] Failed to mount early API filesystems.

i have re-imaged my drive and tried several upgrades
they all fail with the above message