On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 12:48 PM Didier Kryn <kryn@???> wrote:
>
> Le 28/11/2023 à 03:43, Steve Litt a écrit :
>
> I'm speaking for Linux, not for the Debian or Devuan packaging...
>
> If you choose to have your /usr on a separate partition mounting on
> mountpoint /usr, it should be no problem at all because your initramfs
> will boot off its own OS, and then mount /dev/sda5 /usr, and then
> pivotroot back to the hard disk, which now has /usr mounted in the
> correct place. No big deal: It's been done for years: Long before
> usrmerge.
>
> Now of course if a specific distro's packaging system and installer has
> a problem with such a setup, you'll need to do some DIY on that distro.
> But I doubt even Debian is stupid enough to seriously bork this
> customary technique.
>

>     It's exactly that.

>

>     My own comment is: it is only if you decide to tweak the boot sequence that you need to take care.

>

>     The boot sequence is nowadays done in two steps:

>

>     1) boot into a first partition which, for distros, is always an initramfs; perform some mounts and maybe other things;

>

>     2) pivot-root to the final partition and continue the init sequence there.

>

>     Note that, if you decide to craft your own first step, the initial partition is not necessarily an initramfs, provided your kernel is able to mount it, i.e. it has the drivers built-in, which implies you must build it from source.

(I am trying to understand this stuff - - - argh - - - -computers have
been tools for me - - - - argh!).

So If this is what I see in /var/log/boot :

Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: Starting boot logger: bootlogd
Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: ^@Setting up keyboard layout...done.
Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: Activating swap...done.
Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: Checking file systems...fsck.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: /dev/nvme0n1p2: 8 files, 11893/479892 clusters
Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: /boot: clean, 356/61056 files, 57802/243968 blocks
Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: /tmp: clean, 1645/305216 files, 266385/1219328 blocks
Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: /usr/local: clean, 8738/305216 files,
310861/1219328 blocks
Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: /var: clean, 14413/610800 files, 667782/2439168 blocks
Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: done.
Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023: Cleaning up temporary files....
Wed Nov 15 06:01:51 2023: Loading kernel module lp.
Wed Nov 15 06:01:51 2023: Loading kernel module ppdev.
Wed Nov 15 06:01:51 2023: Loading kernel module parport_pc.
Wed Nov 15 06:01:51 2023: Loading kernel module nct6775.
Wed Nov 15 06:01:51 2023: Mounting local filesystems...done.

is this the booting into an initramfs? (Wed Nov 15 06:01:50 2023:
/dev/nvme0n1p2: 8 files, 11893/479892 clusters )

TIA