Hi,

On Sat, 2026-06-20 at 07:55 -0500, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> Greetings
>
> I use a separate system to do initial updates on before I do some on
> my main system.
> A habit developed quite some time ago on advice from a mentor.
>
> Did the usrmerge upgrade and then had an unusable system.
> Stopped there.
>
> Have seen comments which seem to suggest that this usrmerge idea is
> not really a good idea.
>
> So do I reinstall Daedalus on my testing system and not bother
> upgrading to Excalibur waiting for perhaps an option where I don't
> need to use usrmerge or do I do an install of
> Excalibur removing Daedalus (which is not borked).
>
> Advice is sought - - - please?
>
usrmerge originates in the underlying Debian development system and the
Devuan devs decided that unmerged option wasn't saveable. 
To update to Excalibur and any subsequently dist-upgrades (which are
already in testing, there no going back on usrmerge) you will need to
install usrmerge.
This is not to say that usrmerge was intrinsically a good idea, and you
may have seen comments here and elsewhere saying so.
However it should be mostly harmless - I've applied it on 3 systems now
without any issues - but seemingly that has not been the case on your
testing system.
I would judge that what you need to do is find out why usrmerge is
failing, sort that and then upgrade your testing system (and once that
works your main system) to Excalibur. Perhaps easy said than done.
 
I assume you have cloned your testing system from your main system,
which is presumably fully upgraded, checked that it works and then
applied usrmerge? 
What exactly happened when you did that, did it just freeze, or
something else?

--
Marjorie