Bug#1037238: debian-installer: separate /usr ruins opening a shell in rescue

[tomas k <forensic@wi.rr.com>]

Package: debian-installer
Severity: critical
Tags: d-i
Justification: breaks the whole system
X-Debbugs-Cc: forensic@wi.rr.com

Dear Maintainer,

I'm on a different system than the problem one. For years I have had to boot knoppix
and run a chroot to change a password I've forgotten, because I use a separate usr partition,
and rescue thinks it's the root directory. Butr without etc it's not going to work.

Most recently, I just wanted to install grub from the Debian install DVD, nothing else, but once again, 
with separate usr, no root shell. So I tried to go through the install and just skip to install grub,
but it wouldn't allow it, because previous steps were skipped. ThAT FIASCO cost me 4  hours, about  the same amount 
of time it would take to fix the rescue system.

My suggestion is, if a user wants a separate usr, to place a hidden flag file in root, the presence of which 
informs the system to mount THAT partition AND look in /etc/fstab, and mount usr. 

I'd really like this back the way it was, but I realize /bin is now symlinks.

Thanks for all the help.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.7
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'proposed-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.18.0-0.bpo.1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled