Again, for some reason that I'm not currently understanding, one of my
replies went to the originator, and not to the list.

Sorry again :( Obviously something stupid that I'm doing (probably
something to do with the heatwave . . . )

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Peter Duffy <peter@???>
To: o1bigtenor <o1bigtenor@???>
Subject: Re: [DNG] question re updating
Date: 28/06/26 10:58:49

On Sat, 2026-06-27 at 13:52 -0500, o1bigtenor wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 27, 2026 at 7:13 AM Peter Duffy <peter@???>
> wrote:
> >
> > 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:
> > >
> > >
> > > > What exactly happened when you did that, did it just freeze, or
> > > > something else?
> > >
> > > At reboot the system was not able to be accessed.
> >
> > Can you recall specifically what was on the screen? Might help to
> > narrow down what was going on. For example - did the kernel boot,
> > and
> > if so - at the end of it, did it drop you into a single user shell,
> > or
> > just hang?
>
> Dunno what you might call it - - - but when one doesn't get the
> expected log in prompt
> and there is no way to even try to find it - - - ie level 1 then I
> call it borked.
> Hung would also work - - - - garbage is another.
>
> I had done the apt update, apt (whatever the command to read all
> packages that
> need updating) and apt upgrade earlier with a second round of apt
> update to
> check that everything was settled.
> Did the usrmerge at that point.
>
> I'm not a systems programmer just been a user that pushes the
> envelope for
> about the last almost 30 years so I've only done the RH 5.2 then 6
> then 7.2 then
> Fedora for a couple rounds and then getting pissed because after 6
> months
> Fedora would require a number of changes I went to Debian - - -
> actually started
> with testing and ran that until I updated into Devuan Daedalus which
> I have
> greatly appreciated. In process I switched from nvidia graphics to
> radeon
> where I have been for a number of years now - - - got tired of nvidia
> eol ing
> their stuff long before needed!.
>
> Now with the usrmerge male bovine excrement and from reading the
> comments
> of others on this list I have begun wondering if Devuan users are
> being end
> played into someplace they don't want to be - - - a single user
> system that
> was been trapped because Debian is morphing into something quite not
> like
> it was. It is being manipulated by some major parts of itself into
> becoming
> something that might be something like a proto- RedHat - - -
> something I
> want nothing to do with.
> To make things even more interesting I have just gotten started with
> a few
> projects on and with embedded systems. This is making me hyper
> conscious
> of the long term thinking or a LOT of things.
> I really don't want to leave Devuan  but I've been looking at
> something like
> FreeBSD as an option. Slack has been suggested by others so the
> dependency
> would move from Debian to Slack back end but I dunno if my computer
> foo
> is up to that challenge.
> Wish I had a crystal ball that worked!!!
>
> Suggestions welcome - - - - as crazy as anything you might come up
> with
> 'cause right now everything is open!!!
>
> TIA

I do think it's important - perhaps vital - to find out what went
wrong. It could be something major - on the other hand, it could be
something trivial which could be fixed equally trivially. Maybe
somewhere, there's a reference to an executable which has a hardcoded
path, so it doesn't go through the normal search via PATH and just
doesn't find the program any more, because it's been moved during
usrmerge: it's often occurred to me that this was one of the main "let
sleeping dogs lie" arguments for not doing the usrmerge stuff.  

Do you still have the borked VM? If so, maybe worth trying booting it
with a rescue image - either a devuan live-run image or or a dedicated
rescue system like knoppix. I've never done that on a VM, but it should
be possible. If it worked, it would hopefully be possible to look at
the logs in the broken system and get some idea of where things went
wrong, and maybe some clues as to why.

If that isn't feasible, then there would be two possible ways forward.
One would be for you - if and when you feel up to it - to try it again,
and make notes about what happens. The other would be for someone else
to attempt to replicate what happened. That's obviously going to be
challenging, given that you were upgrading a copy of your own system.

Not sure if that helps . . .