Re: How to undo a merged-user installation?
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. :)
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