Yes, I'd love to see XFS support on Refract installer but that would involve updates to gparted or cfdisk. For some reason it's greyed out to form a XFS logical partition.

The reason xfs is greyed out in gparted is because the xfsprogs package is not installed. If you have enough RAM to install packages in a live session, you can install xfsprogs and then format partitions with xfs.

Refractainstaller will not prevent you from using xfs. You just have to tell it not to format your partitions and do that part yourself. In the graphical installer, check the box that says "Do not format filesystems..." and for the cli installer, edit /etc/refractainstaller.conf to set no_format="yes" (uncomment the line).

 
lsblk (to list your drives)
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
cd /mnt
mount --bind /proc ./proc
mount --bind /sys ./sys
mount --bind /dev ./dev
chroot ./
passwd root

one thing you can try is just using sudo -i when you get in. running passwd root then uninstall sudo.

The devuan installation is not terrorizing. It  admittedly it can be when you instruct /dev/random to write to the drive. It can be hours of waiting sometimes it never seems to finish with no status on the task.

Yes, I'd love to see XFS support on Refract installer but that would involve updates to gparted or cfdisk. For some reason it's greyed out to form a XFS logical partition. Maybe if you use refracta2usb on a XFS system already installed the support would be baked in. I have not tested though! Give it a shot. Compress a system then dd it onto a usb and see if it will allow you to do a XFS install.

Advantage to this is making a tmp mount point, and in fstab enforcing a noexec condition for your tmp folder. It gives versatility using a extended logical partition in several ways making encryption simpler. But makes mounting a VFS running XFS a little trickier for recovery purposes. I noticed it can boot a little slower on some hardware.  But aside from that I'd always use XFS in a LVM if refracta installer supported it.

a "devuan" installation prepared and offered by refracta since begin of may 2022 (devuan_chimaera_4.0.0-signed_amd64_minimal-live.iso )

Thanks for reminding me. I meant to delete that iso after it was tested.

If there's no root password, then you must have chosen to use sudo when you were installing. In that case, you would use your user password. If you do a regular install instead of expert, you will not be asked if you want to use sudo. Here's a pictorial guide to the installer:
https://www.devuan.org/os/documentation … all-devuan

At what point are you being asked for a password that you don't have?

I did spend today all the (free) time to try to install devuan again in an new supplementary partition (my old one initially subject of this msg were convert soon in ceres and did be continuously updated and works well in 32 bit).
today, my purpose was to do the same in 64 bit.
as I did remember the terrible experience above, I did download and burn on a usb stick a "devuan" installation prepared and offered by refracta since begin of may 2022 (devuan_chimaera_4.0.0-signed_amd64_minimal-live.iso ) and hoppe it is possible to install fresh with that live iso.
the iso does not start at all!
after that, I did try the very hard way and to use the ISO devuan_ascii_2.1_amd64_netinst.iso from the devuan miror.
the iso starts and works.

but the success is exactly the same as above moths ago: the installation (expert mode) is not operable because no password for root...

you can not continue!

I did repeat this evening, with extreme attention concerning my entries, and I am absolutely certain at the second time, that die have no error.

but nothing to do to use the installation!

it is again a case of absolute TERROR!

resume of my experience last time (not today!) in 32 bit:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=4898

There's no support for lvm in refractainstaller. [..]

The only filesystem that refractainstaller knows about is ext[2,3,4].

That confirms what I suspected.

Will be looking into this!

Interesting. Just found the iso files here so I'm going to check it out in a VM this weekend.

Thanks again for the feedback, much appreciated.

The only filesystem that refractainstaller knows about is ext[2,3,4].

OK, now here's the part where I tell you about going past the limits.

You could make luks keyfiles to avoid or reduce passphrase entries after the install.
You can use other filesystems if you use the cli installer and set the config file to no_format=yes. Partition and format as you want, then run the installer. You might need to install something in the live system to do this. I don't know what xfs needs.

You can also use the cli installer and manually create lvm or raid. I left some notes about that here: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=2323  One thing that's changed is that you don't have to end the /dev/mapper/name with a digit.

ForgeOS (Formerly Michael's Devuan Edition) uses a modified version of the cli refractainstaller that does support lvm. I've only had a couple of brief looks at it and haven't had a chance to dive into the code. The other notable difference is that you make all your selections at the beginning instead of waiting for questions to pop up.

Refractainstaller has supported full disk encryption for at least a couple of years. Select encryption for the root partition and do not select a separate /boot partition.

The way I usually install my systems using the Debian installer, I get something like this:

/dev/sda1 /boot *unencrypted* <ext2>
/dev/sda2 *LUKS*
> /dev/mapper/crypt *LVM*
>> /dev/mapper/crypt-root *logical volume* <ext4>
>> /dev/mapper/crypt-home *logical volume* <xfs>
>> /dev/mapper/crypt-swap *logical volume*

This is basically LVM on LUKS if I understand it correctly. Root + home + swap are fully encrypted as part of a volume group. Upon booting from GRUB I enter a password to decrypt only once.

I've been unable to create this setup with the Refracta installer. I basically have to create separate boot, root, home and swap partitions each time using settings such as these:

Which gives me this:

/dev/sda1 /boot *unecrypted* <ext2>
/dev/sda2 -> /dev/mapper/root *LUKS* <ext4>
/dev/sda3 -> /dev/mapper/home *LUKS* <ext4>
/dev/sda4 <swap>

In other words, I'll be prompted for a password twice (root_fs + home_fs). Just selecting "Encrypt the root partition" would leave me with an encrypted /home folder but no way to resize and keep it separate from root, etc. Anyway, I *could* live with that but I still prefer the way I can set up encryption using the Debian installer in spite of its quirks.

Also, am I correct there is no support for creating XFS file systems using the live image?

Let me know your thoughts on this. And if there's any way I can help. Overall I do like the Refracta installer for its straightforwardness and simplicity but it's a bit confusing when it comes to encryption since I'm used to the Debian installer.

tylerdurden wrote:

Interrupting the installation just to ask what desktop environment you want or whether you want to participate in the popularity contest. It's annoying because you can't leave the installer unattended and makes you wonder why you can't just indicate your choices before the actual package installation process begins.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed

From the example preseed file they provide it looks like this could save me some precious time. Thanks for the tip!

Interrupting the installation just to ask what desktop environment you want or whether you want to participate in the popularity contest. It's annoying because you can't leave the installer unattended and makes you wonder why you can't just indicate your choices before the actual package installation process begins.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed

Then again, I'm so used to the process by now that I practically know the installer by heart. I tend to use the server image whenever I do a fresh reinstall. Usually the package installation itself is pretty fast for me but the interruptions are a pain. As to locales and keyboard settings, that's what I use a DE for so I can't say I've experienced any problems with that.

I have an aversion to GNOME 3 and haven't installed/used it in years but I suspect the "Gnome Flashback" thing is due to standard GNOME 3 being too heavily dependent on systemd. Is that right?

No issues with slim though I tend to switch to lightdm once the system is installed because I find it more convenient.

That being said, I've been playing around with the live image and the Refracta installer lately and I may switch to using that one from now on. It's pretty straightforward and I like that. Perhaps the only thing that bugs me would be full disk encryption in that it encrypts the root and home partitions separately, unlike the oldschool Debian installer which does LVM on LUKS (requiring you enter the password just once). But I'm still exploring so perhaps there's a way around that.

Other than that, I'm so pleased with using Devuan on a daily basis that I can put up with installer quirks (a Debian legacy one might say) but I can see how it may put off people. Refining the Refracta installer may be the way forward as long as it doesn't get dumbed down like Anaconda and the likes, which would fit the "horrible" label in my book

Admin edit: Follow-up for this post is here: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=4958

Admin edit: Follow-up for this post is here: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=4958

I stand corrected. The Devuan elves have been busier than I imagined!

As always tireless for the services. I on the test repo, have always felt Dev1 readiness in a step with Debian.

Hope @OP find any of those ISO's come to the aid of what he seeks.

BR!