blog/data/2014-11-22-sysvinit-jessie.txt

   1 Title: How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie
   2 Tags: english, debian, bootsystem
   3 Date: 2014-11-22 01:00
   4
   5 <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
   6 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
   7 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
   8 courtesy of
   9 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
  10 Schubert</a> and
  11 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
  12 McVittie</a>.
  13
  14 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
  15 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
  16 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
  17 you upgrade:</p>
  18
  19 <p><blockquote><pre>
  20 Package: systemd-sysv
  21 Pin: release o=Debian
  22 Pin-Priority: -1
  23 </pre></blockquote><p>
  24
  25 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
  26 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
  27 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
  28 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
  29 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
  30
  31 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
  32 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
  33 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
  34 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
  35 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
  36 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
  37
  38 <p><blockquote><pre>
  39 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
  40 </pre></blockquote><p>
  41
  42 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
  43
  44 <p><blockquote><pre>
  45 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
  46 </pre></blockquote><p>
  47
  48 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
  49 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
  50
  51 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
  52 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
  53 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
  54 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
  55 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
  56 Jessie is released.</p>
  57
  58 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
  59 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
  60 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
  61 line.</p>