Hi Martin, hi List,

Il giorno dom 26 nov 2023 alle ore 11:49 Martin Steigerwald <
martin@???> ha scritto:

> Hi!
>
> I just upgrade to runit 2.1.2-54+usrmerge on Devuan Ceres and it gave me
> the following output:
>

>    === WARNING ===
> unmerged system detected via /sbin
> warning: unmerged systems will fail to boot very soon
> due to /[s]bin/ directories becoming empty!!   <----THIS IS THE PROBLEM
> !!!
> please merge this system as soon as possible
> for details refer to DEP17 (M2) documentation
> https://subdivi.de/~helmut/dep17.html

>
>

> Do I need to merge usr on my Devuan Ceres systems in order to prevent boot
> them failing *very soon*. Or is that hint only aimed at Debian users?
>

Yes you need to perform the merge on Ceres.
If you are using Stable (Daedalus) you can still run unmerged but you need
to
remember to perform the merge *before* you ugrade to the next stable
(Excalibur).
If you are tracking testing or unstable you need to perform the merge as
soon
as possible.
This is true for Debian and likely any derivative around; it is also true
regardless
the init you use (runit, sysvinit or openrc).

Stive Litt wrote :
> I'm pretty sure if worst came to worst you could install runit by the
> old ./configure;make;make-install route, and it will work just fine
> with or without the merge, forever.
right now, it really won't work

Svante Signell wrote :
> Hopefully your system will continue to work fine without usrmerge.
Sadly, no

Let me try to better explain this:
Mitigation M2 in
https://subdivi.de/~helmut/dep17.html
means that *every deb package* is about to ship files directly in /usr/bin
instead of /bin, or directly in /usr/lib instead of /lib and so on..
An unmerged system will end up *without* /bin/sh,
/sbin/init, /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
(on amd64) just to make few relevant examples.
At the end of the process (expected around March 2024) an unmerged system
will have /bin, /lib, /sbin directories empty: but I doubt the system will
be able to
perform upgrades to that point.
This move is *mandatory* for every Debian package, so until some derivative
starts to support unmerged layout by forking 500/1000 packages (or by some
other means) the unmerged layout will be broken.

Hope this helps to better understand the situation,
Lorenzo

P.S.
Note that runit is only acting as a messenger here: as runit maintainer
supporting
unmerged system is out of scope (and not feasible since for example I don't
have
control over /bin/sh) but failing to boot is a problem for the package. So
I decided
to print the message with the hope to be able to reach as many users as
possible
before the fallout.
Even if the unmeged layout was declared unsupported, simply breaking
systems with upgrades to the point where the user is forced to reset only
to find
out the the system will fail to boot - without any prior warning - does
not seem a
good approach to me..