Hi:

I want to say that I like the idea of Devuan, since I never was sold
on systemd or that it was especially geared to solve any particular
problem. Instead, as I've gone along, I see how complex it has
become. As I've found trying to use an equivalent Debian
configuration in AWS, it's becoming more difficult to switch.

Let me give an example. In "buster", it used to be enough to install
sysvinit, perhaps make sure that /etc/inittab is correct and reboot.
With "bullseye", that no longer worked. For that version, I avoided
the problem by upgrading from "buster". I saw that the problem
continued in "bookworm". While upgrading again from "bullseye"
worked, I felt more motivated to find out what was going on.

I found that the problem is caused by systemd taking on more of the
startup functionality that used to be handled by other programs: the
resolver, network setup and time syncronization. In particular, the
network setup was kind of nasty to untangle because I found out that
cloud-init calls a package called netplan.io to do it and that depends
on systemd. Simply installing sysvinit and rebooting would leave one
with an instance without a network connection.

With those observations, the first step is to not only install
sysvinit, but also other programs to replace the systemd
funationality: chrony, ifupdown and resolvconf. Experience showed
that wasn't sufficient, because the network was still unconfigured.
My workaround was to use a heuristic to find the name of the network
interface. Mine was this:

echo /run/systemd/network/[0-9]*-netplan-*.link | sed 's/.*[0-9]*-netplan-\([a-z0-9]*\)\.link/\1/'

but I'm sure there are other and perhaps better ways to do it. Then
construct a file under /etc/network/interfaces.d and set it up with
DHCP. Rebooting then brings up a network and a working instance.

It was disappointing to find that I needed to go to such lengths,
because I thought that newer Debian versions would have better support
for other init systems. I don't know if anyone has comments or
suggestions for improvement, but this certainly gives me an
appreciation for the work that Devuan maintainers have to do to keep
up with Debian's latest changes.

Regards,

--
Roy Bixler <rcbixler@???>
"The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the
sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment."
-- Richard P. Feynman