Thank you so much Andrew! I understand why protected property is there now, also I don't have much nice things to say about systemd so When things didn't work as it used to be, I assumed the worst and blamed the usual suspect. So the whole thing works nicely with:
apt-get --allow-remove-essential --no-install-recommends --purge install sysv-rc sysvinit-core systemd-sysv- Another thing is, I had to install ifupdown otherwise the nics don't go up, maybe it needs to be a recommended package? Just an idea. Let me know if you need help on the init page wiki. Thanks so much everyone for keeping sysvinit alive. -- aldemir On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 at 11:11, Andrew Bower <[email protected]> wrote: > 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! >
