On Thu, Feb 19, 2026 at 09:49:39AM +0300, Aldemir Akpinar wrote: > That kind of worked. At least apt obeyed and tried to remove systemd:
I realise you ran the command Thorsten gave you but it would be better if you had included the command line with your output here to confirm exactly what command was run: > (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. I don't believe you needed to include 'systemd-' in this command line - you do that as a second step after reboot, as before. > 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 don't think this is necessary. Sorry, I think the wiki page needs rewriting. I have never done this - perhaps it was necessary in the past. It seems the optimal instructions are a hybrid of the "at installation time" and "at runtime" instructions. > I used to do an apt-get install sysvinit-core, reboot, and apt-get remove > systemd. It always worked from jessie to bookworm. Sorry for having directed you to the wiki when it merely added confusion - I didn't realise how out of date it was. However, the core point was that you needed to use --allow-remove-essential with the 'apt-get install' command as I told you previously. That was just one option change from before. > 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? systemd-sysv is the package that allows systemd to replace sysv-init. There is a bit of terminological confusion here. The --allow-remove-essential actually enables the removal of packages with the "Protected: yes" property. So systemd hasn't been deemed essential. What has changed is that init systems, including sysvinit, have gained this protected property to stop init systems being changed accidentally when you install other packages. That used to happen in multiple directions and, while it could be deemed unnecessary, is not done to hurt any group of users and has actually benefitted runit users who used to have more hoops to jump through. > I feel like debian doesn't care about choice anymore, becoming just > another redhat clone. Then you will be pleased to know that that was not the motivation here!
