I got nostalgic today and looked up some serious study music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9EA90uF7Ek

Afaik the package repositories are not provided over ftp anywhere; not sure how you got that idea.

The package file access relies on HTTP redirect as means for pulling packages from Devuan the store or the Debian store. The principle is simply that the filename for the package files has a prefix of either pool/DEVUAN or pool/DEBIAN and a server rewrite rule that maps the former into a local access whereas the latter is returned as an HTTP redirect to a deb.debian.org service.

Some release iso mirrors offer different file access protocols such as ftp and rsync for the isos.

Good. So when the start script runs /usr/sbin/anacron it actuallly runs /bin/true which is doing bugger all...

Possibly @fsmithred (who's doing refracta-base) knows something about that redirect but in any case it's wrong for your purpose.

The fix has two options:

The first option would be to change the link by:

sudo ln -sTf anacron.orig.anacron /usr/sbin/anacron

That will undo the redirect, but this then runs the risk of being undone, and the redirect comming back, if the live-config package is updated.

The second option would be to change /etc/init.d/anacron to use /usr/sbin/anacron.orig.anacron as binary; i.e., change start-stop-daemon --start command line to be

start-stop-daemon --start --exec /usr/sbin/anacron.orig.anacron -- $ANACRON_ARGS

The second option is probably a more sticky fix than changing the link, although it probably breaks if the live-config package is uninstalled.

EDIT: btw you might want to "verify" that anacron.orig.anacron is indeed the program by checking

$ md5sum /usr/sbin/anacron.orig.anacron
a16e182008f9105825af2580ab9e5ced  /usr/sbin/anacron.orig.anacron

The warning can be ignored. But I expected to see the output "Anacron 2.3 started on 2021-04-01" after the "transferring control", and not seeing that is peculiar... which architecture do you have?

uname -a

file /usr/sbin/anacron

file $(readlink -f /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2)

Hmm. obviously your /usr/sbin/anacron dies before it starts, or while it about to start, seemingly at the point where it should allocate memory.

However the "brk(NULL)" which should follow "munmap()" doesn't show up and instead the "exit_group()" showing premature exiting, and that suggests borked linking rather than out of memory; i.e., a technological mismatch with the dynamic libraries rather then a functional error.

Which libc6 do you have?

ls -l /lib*/ld-linux-*

My test showed nothing ...

But I realized that your forced running only resulted in a "Starting..." message, and not like the expected

$ sudo start-stop-daemon -v --start --exec /usr/sbin/anacron -- -s -d -n -f
[sudo] password for ralph:
Starting /usr/sbin/anacron...
Anacron 2.3 started on 2021-04-01
Will run job `cron.daily'
Will run job `cron.weekly'
Will run job `cron.monthly'
Jobs will be executed sequentially
Job `cron.daily' started
Job `cron.daily' terminated
Job `cron.weekly' started
Job `cron.weekly' terminated
Job `cron.monthly' started
Job `cron.monthly' terminated
Normal exit (3 jobs run)

Which package version do you have?

apt-cache policy anacron |& grep Installed

Is there an anacron running?

pstree -ap | grep -A 3 anacron

You seem to mix up non-root and root user; the user's cron jobs ar run as that user and only root's cron jobs are run as root.

The anacron problem is not that problem, since it gets run by root.

Ok that looks like the "normal" installed files. Hmmmm....

Do you use apparmor or selinux? Either one can do ugly things.

So apparently the anacron start/stop script gets invoked every hour as it should, but it fails to perform.

Add set -x on a line after your added date ... in /etc/init.d/anacron, and then wait for next invocation which now logs the whole script execution to /tmp/WTF. This in particular should have the line:

+ start-stop-daemon --start --exec /usr/sbin/anacron -- -s

Seeing that to be so you would next try to force run the weekly scripts again. First ensure any previous run has completed, with

pgrep -a run-parts

returning nothing, and then use

run-parts --verbose /etc/cron.weekly

to see the new, forced weekly run happening.

Good. As you might know, anacron is supposed to provide the extended cron function to make sure that the regular scripts are run even if the machine happens to be down at the nominal trigger time. Since the scripts are not run it is possible that this "chain of control" is broken; that cron fails to run anacron or that anacron fails to run the script(s).

The running of anacron is typically set up using the sysvinit start/stop script, once initially at  boot up, and then regularly by cron with the schedule contol script /etc/cron.d/anacron. Afaict looking at my such script, it includes the particual misfeature of not running anacron imperatively but rather making this dependent on the absence of something. (A small-brain idea appearing as attempted solution to cater for a range of possible installation sites other than this one, but not bad enough for the effort of forking the package)

So, if that something is present then your set up does not run anacron as it should and consequently your weekly script won't be run "automatically". Similarly the boot up run of the script only happens at boot up if it's set up so.

If the preconditions for the regular run/start of anacron are there, the next point of call would be to review and confirm anacron local configuration, at both /etc/anacrontab and /etc/default/anacron. And for debugging purposes also add/change the start/stop script so that it makes some output to, say, /tmp/WTF (eg a date stamp) whenever it's run. Further, to speed up the testing cycle you might set it up for daily trimming rather than weekly since the auto-magic is supposedly the same for that (as configured in the typical installed /etc/anacrontab).

Create a file named /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf with content

options enable_ini=N

See man modprobe.d for details.
(That man page belongs to the kmod package, which may and might not be installed)