I can't chroot to the target because there's no shell installed
Please post the actual chroot command you're trying along with the full error message. The standard debootstrap command most certainly installs bash, it wouldn't be much use otherwise.
Debian has a guide on installing through the CLI (and it's there that I found out about deboostrap) so I think it would be useful if Devuan had one as well.
Just follow https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/ … 03.en.html but download Devuan's debootstrap .deb package and use Devuan's mirrors (as noted above).
]]>I.e., the protocol should be http rather than https because the FQDN deb.devuan.org resolves to the collection of repository mirrors, and the local path should be /merged so as to properly trigger the web service rewrite rules that dispatch (bmo 302 redirecs) between pure debian packages and the forked devuan packages.
]]>the debootstrap command I ran:
# debootstrap --exclude=ca-certificates --include=runit --arch amd64 beowulf /mnt/target 'https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/devuan'
(I should add that the system I am running debootstrap is Gentoo, and maybe the version of debootstrap in Gentoo is different from the version used in Devuan; maybe I am missing a debootstrap script that I should be using, IDK)
Debian has a guide on installing through the CLI (and it's there that I found out about deboostrap) so I think it would be useful if Devuan had one as well.
]]>