Hi Bill,


As Stefan noted, there's too much being changed and too little information
for us to help you.  You probably have a quarter million or more files
on your system - enough files that if they were printed out they would fill
a small library.  And you're changing things.  And computers are very fussy
eaters.  We have no idea what you have on your system so how can we tell
you where it is broken?

For best results start with a clean install and only change what you
understand.  Thoroughly test one change before trying another.  Keep
good backups so you can back away from mistakes.


On Sat August 4 2018 23:01:10 William Morder wrote:
> Sorry to vanish in mid-thread; a combination of this ongoing problem,
> which forces me to reinstall my system every other day

Does the system run correctly after installing?  Precisely what changes
to break things?  Is your hardware reliable?


> my home folder has remained essentially the same through several
> different operating systems 

Don't restore your entire home folder - it contains lots of config that's
probably obsolete or incompatible.  Restore only specific user files
such as documents, photos, music, etc.


> I did find a cookie file with rw permissions only. (I assume that this
> ought to be rw-r-r, am I right?)

Probably not.  There's no reason for other users to read your configs.


> Could not create lock file in /tmp/.tXO-lock

As Stefan noted, this is where you should start.  Check your syslog from
boot to this point to find an explanation of why your root filesystem
was either remounted read-only or was not remounted read-write.


> This seems to be caused by some conflict between Debian and Devuan packages.

This is somewhat unlikely as the two are very compatible and mostly identical.


--Mike