On Mon, 6 Jul 2015 14:38:19 -0400
Clarke Sideroad <clarke.sideroad@???> wrote:

> On 07/06/2015 01:39 PM, Klaus Fuerstberger wrote:
> > Debian wheezy ISO images still exist:
> > https://www.debian.org/releases/oldstable/debian-installer/
> >
> > Also the Debian wheezy repositorys:
> > deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
> > deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
> > deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main
> >
> > So as long as Devuan is in alpha/beta state you can keep your wheezy
> > installation or install wheezy.
> >
> > Thanks for the Devuan developers for this idea and the work in
> > maintaining this systemd free distribution.
> >
> > Klaus
> >
> >
> Be careful with a fresh Wheezy install and updates, it will install
> systemd and related baggage if you blink at the wrong time.
> I tried to travel back in time a couple of months ago and was
> shocked by what unfolded on my machine.
>
> Clarke

I remember that, Clarke, it was bad.

Perhaps until we get a whole distro defending us against the kudzu like
growth of systemd's roots, perhaps the best thing is simply to install
Jessie and then solder bridge it with a real init like runit, s6,
Epoch, or Suckless Init plus daemontools-encore plus LittKit. Doing
this leaves the systemd software on your disk, but at least for the
purpose of PID1 and process management, systemd software never gets run.

I've done this a couple times before, including on CentOS. It's not
easy. Not only do you need to write your own run scripts or Epoch defs,
but you need to address things like populating /dev, /sys, and the
like. And, of course, you need to kill and restart, in a non-systemd
way, any systemd stuff started by the initramfs, especially udev and
dbus. And doing it with the solder-bridged init almost guarantees
there's certain software you'll never use, like Gnome, NetworkManager,
and maybe even Xfce. But once you make it and make backup copies, it
should be pretty easy to redeploy it on other systemd infested distros.

It's a lot of work that just might pay off.

SteveT

Steve Litt
July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21