Installing sysvinit on Buster alongside Xfce, network-manager, etc?

[Jacob Nevins]

Hello,

Thank you for your work in this group.

I'm a returning Debian user, and I'm trying for a Buster install on a
laptop running sysvinit and the Xfce desktop environment, including
conveniences like network-manager.

I haven't had much luck so far, even after trying to pick the latest
elogind (241.1-1+debian1) from unstable.

This is a fresh amd64 Buster install (from the debian-installer RC1
netinst image), including tasks "Xfce" and "laptop". So it started out
running systemd.

I tried just installing sysvinit-core and elogind from testing, but that
causes apt to try to uninstall a lot of things including network-manager
and task-xfce-desktop, which I don't want.

As I understand it (not very well), elogind 241.1 and related packages
are intended to address this sort of conflict by providing a libsystemd0
that is binary-compatible with the one from the systemd package.
Unfortunately, that version is not currently scheduled to get into
Buster: <https://bugs.debian.org/925489>.

So I set up some apt pinning so that I could try to install elogind from
unstable. I think I achieved what I intended with the apt pinning, but
on attempting to install the newer elogind (details below), apt still
tries to remove half the world.

I'm not that familiar with apt's reasoning, so I haven't figured out the
chain of dependencies/conflicts leading to its decision. I also don't
really understand what all the moving parts would be in a working
sysvinit + desktop-environment setup and how they interrelate. It's also
possible I just have my apt recipe wrong.

Am I along the right lines? -- will it be possible to have sysvinit and
things like network-manager coexist in a Buster installation by
cherry-picking elogind (and possibly keeping it up to date as
real-systemd gets security updates)?

Multiarch is also in play: I have installed wine32 which pulls in a load
of :i386 packages, including systemd-related ones. I don't know if that
complicates things; I could certainly live without wine32 if so.


Here is one of the things I tried with apt. (I also tried something
involving "-t unstable". It's quite possible I just don't have the right
invocation, I'm not that familiar with doing this with apt.)

$ sudo apt install sysvinit-core elogind/unstable libelogind0/unstable
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Selected version '241.1-1+debian1' (Debian:unstable [amd64]) for 'elogind'
Selected version '241.1-1+debian1' (Debian:unstable [amd64]) for 'libelogind0' because of 'elogind'
Selected version '241.1-1+debian1' (Debian:unstable [amd64]) for 'libelogind0'
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  [snip a lot of packages]
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  initscripts insserv psmisc startpar sysv-rc
Suggested packages:
  bootchart2 bootlogd
Recommended packages:
  policykit-1
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  dbus-user-session gnome-disk-utility gufw gvfs gvfs-daemons iio-sensor-proxy
  libasound2-plugins:i386 libavahi-client3:i386 libcups2:i386 libdbus-1-3:i386
  libnss-systemd libpam-systemd libpulse0:i386 libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 libsystemd0
  libsystemd0:i386 libwine:i386 light-locker lightdm network-manager
  network-manager-gnome packagekit packagekit-tools plymouth plymouth-label
  policykit-1 policykit-1-gnome rtkit synaptic systemd systemd-sysv
  task-xfce-desktop udisks2 wine32:i386
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  elogind initscripts insserv libelogind0 psmisc startpar sysv-rc
  sysvinit-core
0 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 34 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,448 kB of archives.
After this operation, 275 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n


Here is my apt pinning setup, intended to allow me to make selected
packages from unstable available to install, without opening the
floodgates:

Add "unstable main" lines to /etc/apt/sources.list.
Add a file to /etc/apt/preferences.d containing:
  Package: *
  Pin: release a=unstable
  Pin-Priority: -1