On Sat, Jun 20, 2026 at 2:46 PM Marjorie Roome <amusing@???> wrote:
>
> 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.

The mostly negative comments - - - especially about its 'value' plus the
borking are what has me wanting to avoid dealing with usrmerge.

> 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?

Not really. I've had this testing system up for some quite a number of
years at this point. I just install software that I haven't used before
first on the testing system and then trash the new software - - - if I
don't like what it does or how it acts (have had total wrecks in the past -
i ie inoperable system) I haven't taken down my daily driver which I
did last before I started using this 'testing system' idea.

> What exactly happened when you did that, did it just freeze, or
> something else?

The steps include running usermerge and then doing a reboot.

At reboot the system was not able to be accessed.
I was planning on just removing everything Daedalus and doing
a clean install of Excalibur - - - like all I would be saving would be
/home and /bin (I think that is where all the software is installed).
Dunno if that would even work but that was my idea.

Thanks for the ideas!