Thank you, I have now commented out those entries with /devuan, leaving only those with /merged.

apt-get update

now runs with no warnings

apt-get dist-upgrade

then runs, and in this case wants to upgrade firefox. It does this ok, but then produces the warning :-

Setting up firefox-esr (52.5.0esr-1~deb8u1) ...
Setting up iceweasel (52.5.0esr-1~deb8u1) ...
W: Size of file /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/iceweasel_52.5.0esr-1~deb8u1_all.deb is not what the server reported 121762 15522

The upgrade came from jessie-security/main.

Geoff

I have now upgraded the other packages, not involved in this query.

The method I chose was to use Synaptic.
Click "Reload".
then bottom left, select "Status" ad then upper left select "Installed (upgradable)".
This displays all of the installed packages which can be upgraded.
Scroll down to the queried package "xserver-xorg-core" and click on it.
Click on the Package pull down menu and select "Force version".
This will pop-up a window which allows you to select which version you want on your machine. I selected the old version.
Just to be safe I also selected a couple of other apparently related packages with the same versions installed/available and forced their versions.
Then simply click on "Mark All Upgrades".
You can check that the ones that you have forced will not be upgraded.
Click on "Apply" and it will then upgrade all of the other packages. I did notice a warning about Firefox failing to display YouTube correctly, but let it proceed as that can be worked around if necessary.

Geoff

I am still have version 2:1.16.4-1 installed and it is running nicely. According to Synaptic it is from the stable/main repository, which is now offering your version.

When I checked the Debian bug report, it is still outstanding and there does not appear to be any progress.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=868068

Geoff

I have now tried disabling the updates and security repositories, and the result is that

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

still wants to upgrade to xserver-xorg-core 2:1.16.4-1+deb8u1, which still has the warning "loses keyboard and mouse".

I have still not let it upgrade while getting the warning.

Geoff

My machine has a Gigabyte H87-HD3 Intel H87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard, with an Intel Core i5-4570 3.20 GHz processor.
It uses the in-built Intel graphics.
Linux fluorine 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.43-2+deb8u1 (2017-06-18) x86_64 GNU/Linux

The general set up (or rather how I got here) is described at :-

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=92

Geoff

I notice that this has now improved and that when you press F1, the session is displayed in white on the purple background and is much more readable.

Thank you to whoever fixed it!

Geoff

A few more thoughts on SpaceFM with LXDE.

I tend to forget that the wallpaper for LXDE sessions is looked after by PCManFM and, in fact, the pop-up menu when you right click on the background in also supplied by PCManFM. SpaceFM does also work in this way. From the "Preferences" menu select the "Default applications for LXSession" and in the "Autostart" tab you should see an entry for pcmanfm :-

@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE"

you can untick the box for that entry and then add in a new one, thus :-

@spacefm --desktop

This will probably only take effect when you next log-in. The actual entries for Autostart live in the file : ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart, although you should probably be a bit careful about editing the files directly.

Once you have SpaceFM running then you can change the wallpaper with a right-click on the background and select "Desktop Settings" and the "Desktop" tab. It is interesting to note that SpaceFM and PCManFM treat the screens differently if you are running in Zaphod mode (twin-headed). SpaceFM just treats the space as one large area, with several modes to fit the picture to the space. PCManFM treats each monitor separately on most of its display modes, with only one mode for the combined display.

I am currently still running udev, but SpaceFM does mount file systems when they are plugged in. When I plug in my Cheap Android 'phone, both the internal files and the SD card files are both mounted. It is some time since I tried my camera, a Canon PowerShot A470, but when I plugged it in, the file system was not mounted. I then found my little write-up to remind me how to use gphoto2 to download the pictures and this does still work.

Geoff

Since upower depends on libplist2, and I was unable to install the Ascii version, I thought that I would see if I could install the Jessie version of upower. I did this by commenting out the ascii lines from /etc/apt/sources.list and put an entry in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie.list

deb http://auto.mirrors.devuan.org/merged/ jessie main

and then did an update and then installed upower. This then pulled in libplist2, libusbmuxd2, libimobiledevice4 & libupower-glib1 from the Jessie repo. I then commented out the jessie line and restored the ascii lines in sources.list, followed by an update. I followed this with apt-get dist-upgrade and there was nothing to upgrade and no reports of further broken packages.

In the efforts to remove libsystemd0, while parts of lxqt were removed, several applications were left behind. lxqt-powermanagement remains but was not working without upower, but it is now working and is displaying the battery status.

Geoff

Having upgraded my desktop machine to Devuan Jessie, I thought it was time to return to my Ascii/Testing laptop and tidy things up.

My initial upgrade had consisted of updating /etc/apt/sources.list so that the active lines were :-

deb http://auto.mirrors.devuan.org/merged/ ascii main contrib non-free  
deb http://auto.mirrors.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-security main contrib non-free  
deb http://auto.mirrors.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-updates main contrib non-free  

and then performing apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade.
At various times I had installed LXDE, XFCE and LXQT.

I decided to follow what I had done with my Jessie desktop machine, but with lxqt instead of lxde, which was roughly equivalent to :-

apt-get purge systemd-shim libsystemd0
apt-get autoremove
apt-get install lxqt
apt-get install xserver-xorg-core
apt-get install xorg
apt-get install libreoffice libreoffice-gtk
apt-get install policykit-1

The initial purge removed a lot, including lxde, lxqt and xfce as well as xserver, xorg, nfs and cups.
The autoremove removed a very large amount of stuff, over a screen full.
Installing lxqt did not pull in X! Installing xserver-xorg-core made it work well enough that, on rebooting, lxdm would start, but not in a way that I could log in. In fact, all the keys and mouse were dead. I could not remember how much would be running in rescue mode, but fortunately the networking was working and it could find my wired ethernet, so I could run apt-get. Installing xorg got X working and following a reboot I was able to log in to my lxqt session.

But lxqt pulls in libsystemd0.

With lxqt installed an apt-get purge libsystemd0 would now remove :-

libpulse0, libsystemd0, lxqt, lxqt-core, xorg, xserver-xorg...

If I install lxde and then try to purge libsystemd0 it does not want to remove lxde, although without xorg and xserver-xorg, I'm not sure that it would be very useful.
So, I tried it and lxde would install without bringing in libsystemd0, but it would not run. I therefore installed xorg, which does bring in libsystemd0, but does allow lxdm and then lxde to run. I had installed lxdm earlier and it was not removed by my actions described here.

apt-rdepends reports that both lxqt and xorg are dependent on libsystemd0.

It is not currently possible to upgrade gcr and xfconf because of broken packages possibly caused by held packages. I notice that they were both dependent on default-dbus-session-bus|dbus-session-bus, which reminds me of the nicely illustrated post under "Hardware", although after a dist-upgrade they were held back but are now dependent on dbus-x11.

Also upower will not install because :-
upower:
Depends: libimobiledevice4 (>=0.9.7) but it is not installable
Depends: libplist2 (>=1.11) but it is not installable
Depends: libupower-glib1 but it is not going to be installed

and thus, I am unable to install either gnome or xfce -power-manager to see what my battery is doing.

The following installs worked and I could probably have put them all on one line. They replace nfs and vlc which were removed by my earlier efforts and installed Spacefm for further investigation.

apt-get install nfs-common
apt-get install udevil spacefm
apt-get install ssh-askpass
apt-get install vlc

Geoff

I have updated the summary in message number 38
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=430#p430
with the extra info in the recent posts.

Geoff