On Sun, 11 Sep 2016 17:44:19 +0200
<emninger@???> wrote:

> One system is/was running devuan ascii quite nicely but when i came
> back i did an 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade' and i
> realize(d), that openrc (which i was used to use) was removed.

[snip]
>
> Anyway, any pointer will be highly welcome!

The following advice is completely unresponsive to your question, but
is perhaps tangentially related...

Have you tried initting with runit instead of openrc (or sysvinit)?

OpenRC is so big and complex that it's best installed with a package,
and it seems like init packages like to de-install their competitors
the way new alpha-male lions kill the cubs of their predecessors.

Runit is extremely simple: Simple enough to easily install,
sans-package, straight from the "upstream's" website. Doing this gives
you a parallel Runit/sysvinit init choice, simply by changing the init
section of the kernel line in grub.cfg.

I personally think that Runit is better than OpenRC and sysvinit, which
of course are in turn much better than systemd. Of course, I'm
prejudiced: I'm a huge fan of djb's daemontools software and everything
influenced by it.

If you're *not* a daemontools fanatic like I am, another init system
you might want to try is Epoch:

* https://universe2.us/epoch.html
* https://github.com/Subsentient/epoch

Epoch is probably the easiest init system to install and configure. I
used it experimentally about 18 months ago, and it's excellent.

So, if you refuse to use systemd, but you're not a huge fan of sysvinit
either, then if OpenRC doesn't attract you with specific features,
initting with runit or Epoch might be easier for you to achieve.

SteveT

Steve Litt
September 2016 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
http://www.troubleshooters.com/28