Hello Haines,

On Sun, 4 Jun 2017, Haines Brown wrote:

> I have an installation routine I've used since Lenny and perhaps
> even Etch. I stuck to it, and generally accepts defaults.

A list of exactly what you started with and exactly what you did,
step-by-step, would be more useful to the problem-finding. You've
made a start in your reply to KatolaZ although it's a bit woolly.

> Don't know what it means to "stress" package installation.

What you've done seems to have stressed it. :)

> It's the same set of packages I had not problem installing on
> earlier versions of Debian.

It looks like the problem (if it's only one, and I'm starting to
wonder) happened independently of installing sets of packages.

> Are you suggesting that Devuan Jessie might have some installation
> weaknesses not present in Debian Jessie?

Because it's different and less well exercised, I'd be prepared to bet
on it - but I'm not becessarily sure that that's the problem here. :)

> How can a package installation damage existing libraries?

I'm almost sure that the damage is that you have mixed architectures.
You have either a 32-bit binary looking for 32-bit executables or a
64-bit binary looking for 64-bit executables and in neither case is it
finding them. When you look in the directory tree you see files which
you take to be the executables, but they are not executable by your
running system so it perfectly properly ignores them.

> How is it possible to mix 32-bit and 64-bit if one follows the
> installer's defaults?

You tell us. The list I mentioned above might become the basis of a
bug report, or it might be the answer to many of the questions, but at
the moment I don't know if there's enough information for anyone to be
able to replicate the issue and that's crucial.

> I installed packages from the US Devuan repository. Perhaps I should
> instead have installed them from my USB key DVD ISO. I'll try that
> when I have the time.

It could be you've mixed architectures that way but it seems to me more
likely that at some point you weren't running the executables that you
thought you were running because you had more than one architecture on
various operating systems lying around on the drives in your system.

> > Incidentally mailing list etiquette suggests replies on-list ...
>
> My apologies, I didn't see that you were answering my question off list.

No, I meant that when I posted to this list you replied privately:

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In that reply you said

> While GRUB boots the amd64 Devuan Jessie, its menu does not list my
> old Debian 32-bit drive. I'll have to pursue this to figure out
> why. I could do it manually, but there must be an easier way.

which information might have been very useful to other list readers.

Of course it isn't a 32-bit drive, it's a drive which has installed on
it a Debian OS with a 32-bit architecture. It looks suspiciously like
you have created some horrible mongrel installation. I think you need
to do a clean install of Devuan on a system with a freshly-formatted
disc which contains no other OS to confuse the issues. For any fresh
install I would tend to remove or disable any drives not necessary to
the immediate installation, in case something like GRUB or LILO did
something unexpected with them. That may be what's happened here.

--

73,
Ged.