Hi,

On Sat, 2026-06-20 at 15:48 -0500, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> 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!
My own preference is to upgrade, where possible and I've done that
since I first installed Devuan as Beowulf
(Beowulf>Chimaera>Daedalus>Excalibur). I just have too many
customisations to want to start again from a clean system install. But
clearly a cleaen install would get round the possible usrmerge fail and
might work better for you.

My own upgrade process was to back up my system (I use a fsarchive
partition backup for root which I can run live via a LVM2 snapshot) and
then applied the steps described in
https://www.devuan.org/os/documentation/install-guides/excalibur/upgrade-to-excalibur.html
). 

The fsarchive can be reinstalled from my 'spare' installation if I need
to rollback (also something I've done in the past, so I know it works).
Presumably you did somethign similar to recover your test system.

Note usrmerge is not the first step in this, you get Daedalus fully up
to date first.

As I've said this process always worked fine and the system was
bootable - I've done it 3 times on separate systems now upgrading to
Excalibur. I don't recall trying to boot immediately after usrmerge.

I would imagine you could try the same on your test system first, but I
would want that test system to be a bootable clone/copy of the main
system, which at present it may not be.

--
Marjorie