On Tue, 2020-02-18 at 17:35 +0000, jnq...@gmail.com wrote: > On Tue, 2020-02-18 at 17:58 +0100, Svante Signell wrote: > > Hello, > > > > I recently installed Debian/bullseye/sid in a VM from a snapshot. > > After running > > that image I realized the I got a merged-user installation. > > > > As for now I have: > > bin -> usr/bin > > lib -> usr/lib > > lib32 -> usr/lib32 > > lib64 -> usr/lib64 > > libx32 -> usr/libx32 > > sbin -> usr/sbin > > > > Is there some way to achieve a non-merged-user system from the > > current > > situation? > > > > The Debian Installer does not seem to have an option for a non- > > merged-user > > installation. Is that true? > > > > Thank you for your time! > > As I understand it (I somehow only became aware of it days ago) a > move > to merged usr has been a move planned for Debian since ~2014 and all > more recent installers implement it by default. I would not expect > any > available switch in the installer to avoid it (why add complexity to > support the older layout that surely no-one needs?). > > I have to ask, why are you determined to spend effort reversing the > change? > > While merging is of course trivial, un-merging is most certainly not. > The easiest methods that occur to me would be to either: > a) if you have access to an older version of the installer, do a > fresh > install with that (then of course upgrade). > b) make sure the usrmerge package is not installed; manually switch > the symlinks back to actual directories; then ask apt/aptitude to do > a > reinstall of every package on your system. > > Of course I cannot give you any guarantee that the above procedure > will > actually be successful. Proceed at your own risk. :)
edit: what on earth am I thinking, solution B isn't going to be sufficient unless DPKG is brilliant enough to remove things from the old locations; you're ineviatably going to end up still with the merged copies of things floating about in the merged-to directories... to solve that, you cannot exactly just delete the directories before asking apt to reinstall because then you'll likely have broken apt. perhaps after an all-package reinstall you can then purge all files from the merged-to directories that exist in the now unmerged directories (then do a second round of all-packages reinstall, or find a means of checking for packages with missing files to reinstall, to be safe). as I say, non-trivial and proceed at your own risk...