Hi,

Before I joined Devuan I did a sysvinit hack that isolated it to a
dedicated directory under "/". This was a naive attempt by me to use
sysvinit in case Debian decided to intentionally break sysvinit's
installation. Curiously, after using medit to edit /sbin/init's C code
to use the new directory (/dgli), my system booted and was useable.

I am writing here NOT to discuss whether this hack has its place in
Devuan, but because I have the temptation to hack /sbin/init to call a
script/executable when it starts. In the event no such
script/executable exists, I would let /sbin/init start a shell as a
normal unprivileged user.

Edward