Thanks Thorsten, That kind of worked. At least apt obeyed and tried to remove systemd:
(Reading database ... 27088 files and directories currently installed.) Removing systemd (257.9-1~deb13u1) ... systemd is the active init system, please switch to another before removing systemd. dpkg: error processing package systemd (--remove): installed systemd package pre-removal script subprocess returned error exit status 1 dpkg: too many errors, stopping /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/legacy.conf:14: Duplicate line for path "/run/lock", ignoring. Errors were encountered while processing: systemd Processing was halted because there were too many errors. E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) Now https://wiki.debian.org/Init tells me to boot to single user mode, mount /dev and /proc etc. and install sysvinit-core. This is a regression imo (not blaming sysvinit-core maintainers obviously). I used to do an apt-get install sysvinit-core, reboot, and apt-get remove systemd. It always worked from jessie to bookworm. Especially doing this boot to rescue and switch to another init on a virtual server on hosting platforms is a chore. I also thought systemd was dropping sysv support so why all of a sudden systemd-sysv becomes an essential package? I feel like debian doesn't care about choice anymore, becoming just another redhat clone. Thanks, -- aldemir On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 at 21:10, Thorsten Glaser <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 18 Feb 2026, Aldemir Akpinar wrote: > > >Then tried apt-get install again to n9 avail. > > Hmm. You might have a package depending on a logind implementation > installed. > > Try: > > # env LC_ALL=C apt-get --allow-remove-essential --no-install-recommends \ > --purge install sysv-rc sysvinit-core systemd- systemd-sysv- > > If that doesn’t work, try: > > # env LC_ALL=C apt-get --allow-remove-essential --no-install-recommends \ > --purge install sysv-rc sysvinit-core systemd- systemd-sysv- elogind > > If neither works, *do* post the *complete* output from that. > > Good luck, > //mirabilos, also annoyed that both the systemd and the apt developers > are making this harder with every release > -- > 22:20⎜<asarch> The crazy that persists in his craziness becomes a master > 22:21⎜<asarch> And the distance between the craziness and geniality is > only measured by the success 18:35⎜<asarch> "Psychotics are consistently > inconsistent. The essence of sanity is to be inconsistently inconsistent >
