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Dutch_Master

Member

Registered: 2018-05-31

Posts: 309  

Devuan 5 to 6 install failures

Tried upgrading my Devuan 5 to 6 today.

First issue: using aptitude it couldn't download the inrelease file. In FF the file could be found, after I removed some charachers in the URL that shouldn't be there.
http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged/dist … /InRelease
Using apt I could obtain the upgrade list and my system has 2610 packages to upgrade.

Then I hit this:

Preparing to unpack .../base-files_13.8+deb13u1devuan1_amd64.deb ...

******************************************************************************
*
* The base-files package cannot be installed because
* /bin is a directory, but should be a symbolic link.
*
* Please install the usrmerge package to convert this system to merged-/usr.
*
* For more information please read https://wiki.debian.org/UsrMerge.
*
******************************************************************************

dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_13.8+deb13u1de
vuan1_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 new base-files package pre-installation script subprocess returned error exit s
tatus 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_13.8+deb13u1devuan1_amd64.deb
needrestart is being skipped since dpkg has failed
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Frankly, this should have been taken care of by apt, clearly it didn't
Not sure I see the need for this change, but here we go

Dutch_Master

Member

Registered: 2018-05-31

Posts: 309  

Re: Devuan 5 to 6 install failures

Aaaaannnnddd I'm stuck   Even after attempting to install usrmerge with aptitude, installation fails b/c of the above failure :-{ Apt does work, so why not aptitude?

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,756  

Re: Devuan 5 to 6 install failures

I tried an upgrade from daedalus to excalibur yesterday and ran 'aptitude -s upgrade' to see how much was getting upgraded. I like the format of the output better than apt or apt-get. Anyway, after a couple minutes of waiting for aptitude to finish figuring it out, I killed it and just went ahead with 'apt update'. That worked fine.

The base-files issue is explained in the output you posted, and it includes the solution. That part is not news.

* The base-files package cannot be installed because
* /bin is a directory, but should be a symbolic link.
*
* Please install the usrmerge package to convert this system

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,361  

Re: Devuan 5 to 6 install failures

Please read the Release Notes.

RedGreen925

Member

Registered: 2024-12-07

Posts: 205  

Re: Devuan 5 to 6 install failures

And if you are wondering just where the hell the usrmerge is like I was last night it is located so helpfully in /usr/lib, a directory not in your $PATH, not even named usrmerge for shits and giggles but convert-usrmerge by the systemd loving morons who did it.

root@9600k:~# apt-file list usrmerge
usrmerge: /usr/lib/usrmerge/convert-etc-shells
usrmerge: /usr/lib/usrmerge/convert-usrmerge
usrmerge: /usr/share/doc/usrmerge/README.Debian
usrmerge: /usr/share/doc/usrmerge/changelog.gz
usrmerge: /usr/share/doc/usrmerge/copyright

felixed

Member

Registered: 2021-10-28

Posts: 44  

Re: Devuan 5 to 6 install failures

Problems all over ...

Until now there were never great malfunctions throughout the whole upgrade of a devuan distribution.

1st: linux-image is not configured when genuine nvidia-driver is installed, fails to start until resetting to nouveau,
2nd: synaptic quick search is gone and not brought back by the old means as before and
3rd: kaffeine crashes if more than one download is planned ...

It's a new feeling, just like upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Just a bit worse.

I'm staying with daedalus and will look for excalibur a few months later.

Maybe only the One King is entitled to use Excalibur ...

I was used to get a stable version when changing to next Devuan "stable". This is not the case with Excalibur.

Last edited by felixed (2025-11-10 18:39:46)