Dear Maintainer,

I'm on a different system than the problem one. For years I have had to boot knoppix
and run a chroot to change a password I've forgotten, because I use a separate usr partition,
and rescue thinks it's the root directory. Butr without etc it's not going to work.

Most recently, I just wanted to install grub from the Debian install DVD, nothing else, but once again,
with separate usr, no root shell. So I tried to go through the install and just skip to install grub,
but it wouldn't allow it, because previous steps were skipped. ThAT FIASCO cost me 4  hours, about  the same amount
of time it would take to fix the rescue system.

My suggestion is, if a user wants a separate usr, to place a hidden flag file in root, the presence of which
informs the system to mount THAT partition AND look in /etc/fstab, and mount usr.

I'd really like this back the way it was, but I realize /bin is now symlinks.

Thanks for all the help.

tomas k <forensic@wi.rr.com> (2023-06-08):

Hardly. You're starting from a system that requires GRUB to be installed
for some reason. d-i isn't breaking anything at all.

init=/bin/sh works for that.

If rescue doesn't mount all the things automatically, you realize you
can drop to a shell in the installer's context and mount any missing
bit?


Cheers,

Rescue mode does not "think" anything about any partition. It is up to
the user to select the proper root partition, although I admit this
might be improved by providing more information about available
partitions to the user.

With /usr-merged layout (default since buster IIRC), a separate /usr
must be mounted before running any program. The initramfs mounts a
separate /usr before running init, but the installer rescue mode did not
before running a shell. This feature has been added to bookworm
installer (rescue 1.86) but not backported to bullseye installer AFAIK.

/etc/fstab already exists in the root filesystem, so no need to create a
flag file.

That explains it. I can't open the root patitiion, because rescue
system says it's not a root partition until I try what is actually
/usr. But, I have finally given up separate /usr, and just lumped it in
with the pile. But in bookworm it should work?

Bookworm's installer rescue mode should detect a separate /usr in
/etc/fstab and offer to mount it before running a shell in the root
partition, like previous versions already did with a separate /boot or
/boot/efi. Other improvements include properly unmounting nested
filesystems (e.g. /boot/efi then /boot).