On Tue, 2 Dec 2025 22:01:53 +0100
tito via Dng <dng@???> wrote:

> On Tue, 2 Dec 2025 21:55:15 +0100
> tito via Dng <dng@???> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 3 Dec 2025 07:13:55 +1100
> > terryc <terryc@???> wrote:
> >
,,,,,,,snip

> > > TIA.
> > > terryc
> > Hi.
> > what I would do absolutely untested:

Thanks Tito
Your posts gave me a clue sheet to further guide my fiddling.

The first problem was the grub config was resolutely looking for the
UUID of the badly corrupted partition of the original SATA.

Since the boot order configuration of the ASUS motherboard wasn't
responding to mouse dragging, it took a bit to get to a CLI installer
and to repeatedly install/update grub, then edit by hand the grub
command line to change the UUID from the SATA to the nvme.

Once I had a consistent reboot going. it was time to resolve the
/proc, /sys, /tmp, ? problem. It turned out all I had to do was create
the / directory and then their files are auto created on boot up.

That also applies to /dev, but I'd copied that directory as I'm from
'ye olde days' when you had to manually create/collect device drivers.

At that stage, I could ssh out and sendmail and teapot(?) were
collecting and sending mail.

The final problem was getting APT to work so I could update the system
without a massive sneaker net transfer like I thought I'd have to do and
you clearly outlined.

This turned out to be changes in how /etc/resolv.conf works. Apparently
it has been changed again in the last decade (woops)

So time to run the update/upgrade/dist-upgrade trio, reboot and
watch the logs closely for a few days.


> >
> > 1) create a clone (with dd ?) of the nvme to another disk for
> > experimenting 2) boot the system with the devuan/debian live cd or
> > installer 3) open a shell
> > 4) mount the nvme to a directory e.g. /mnt
> > 5) bind mount /proc to /mnt/proc, /sys to /mnt/sys, /dev to
> > /mnt/dev (did I forget some?) 6) as root chroot /mnt/
> > 6bis) make a copy of /mnt/etc just in case some conf file gets
> > clobbered in the recover process 7) set up networking would help
> > 8) run: dpkg --get-selections | cut -f1 > list.txt to create a
> > list of installed packages 9) run: for i in $(cat list.txt) ; do
> > apt install --reinstall $i; done (or if no network use the list to
> > download all packages and run for i in $(cat list.txt) ; do apt
> > install --reinstall ./$i; done)
>
> 10) check the entries in /mnt/etc/fstab and fix the blkids (check the
> output of blkid) 10bis) re-run grub-install /dev/???
> 10ter) re-run update-grub
>
> > 11) re-run update-initramfs -u -k all
> > 12) exit chroot and cd /
> > 13) umount /mnt/proc, /mnt/sys, /mnt/dev, /mnt
> > 14) reboot and remove livecd
> > 15) hope for the best, if it works redo on nvme or clone to nvme
> >
> > Now I hope the list members will tell you why this is a very bad
> > idea or which super-obvious step I have overlooked or forgotten.

In my case it covered everything.
>