Quoting Joachim Fahrner (jf@???):

> Am 2017-08-05 11:28, schrieb Weaver:
>
> >Currently running Debian SID, with separate /, swap, and /home
> >partitions.
> >I don't suppose switching is as easy as simply replacing the /
> >partition
> >with a new install, preserving the old data?
>
> Yes it is easy. Choose the same partition layout in the installer,
> but only format the root partition. Disable formatting on the home
> partition. After installation create the users as before, and all
> should work again as before.

I second this excellent advice, except Weaver should carefully examine
the filesystems to be blown away, to spot any exceptions, which is to
say things that he might wish to preserve.

When I was relatively new to Debian, I discovered that my server
installation included a few surprising directory locations, e.g.:

1.  /usr/lib included critical GNU Mailman state files, the Apache 
    httpd's CGI-BIN directory, and a number of other such things
    in addition to system libraries.
2.  /var included yet more critical GNU Mailman files, MySQL files, etc.

It's accordingly well worth spending some time exploring the system
before accidentally blowing away something you might later miss.


There is a small chance that Weaver's homedir dotfiles / dotfile
directory contents from Sid might have problems on Devuan Ascii,
because of the effect of back-revving some codebases. For example, in
my experience GNOME's dotfiles / dotfile directories have poor backwards
compatibility (something my employer found out the hard way in the 2000s
when it tried to use GNOME Desktop with /home as an autofs network
share). It doesn't seem likely, but in the event of problems, (1)
crosscheck using a new test user, and if that user has no problems
but your regular user does, then (2) try again with the various dotfiles
and dotfile directories in ~ renamed to *.backup.