On Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 10:09:01PM +0100, Nick via Dng wrote:
> On 20-03-2025 21:57, Roy Bixler via Dng wrote:
> > Also, I fixed the subject to match the content, but I did wonder why
> > the only Devuan images I could find were an old "chimaera" AMI and a
> > few unofficial builds using "runit". I'm stuck with Debian for now,
> > except my desktop which is Devuan. I may experiment with "runit"
> > someday.
> >
> Afaik runit in Debian default uses the sysv-init scripts which does not give
> you the full advantage of the supervisor capabilities from runit.
>
> Probably another reason systemd wants to get rid of sysv-init scripts so
> other (better) init systems cannot use them any longer.

It sure does sound like someone wants a monopoly on init, but
ironically, what led me to believe that I would have an easier time
switching the init system on Debian bookworm is that the documentation
has a section on how to change the init system. The proviso is that
they recommend doing it during installation, which wouldn't work for
my use case. These cloud images are already installed and I prefer to
start with the official Debian images rather than roll my own.

But checking the banned packages list in Devuan, I see that the
debian-cloud-images packages is on the list for, among other things,
its dependency on netplan. The other systemd dependencies were easier
to work around, but netplan ultimately required me to look into how
the system used to set up networking and restore that. (I found my
naive little hack failed for the case where the image booted on a
different architecture and the interface name changed.)

So I found that I needed to re-add something like the following in
/etc/udev/rules.d/75-cloud-ifupdown.rules:

# Handle allow-hotplug interfaces
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ENV{INTERFACE}=="eth*|en*", RUN+="/etc/network/cloud-ifupdown-helper"

and then restore the helper script, which was also missing. There is
also a template file and an alteration to interfaces was needed to look
in the /run/network/interfaces.d directory.

I suspect something like the following bug report:

https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/issues/3619

may have led to the old files being pulled. They also filed a bug
against ifupdown, but it still seems deficient under Debian bookworm.
I suspect that Devuan maintainers are well acquainted with such
occurrences.

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