Multiple desktop environments doesn't work as easily as it used to. There are more dependency conflicts. You might have an easier time if you avoid metapackages. Instead of task-xfce-desktop or any of the others that get installed from the installation isos, install xfce4 or even install the individual parts. Same goes for the other desktops. That way you can resolve conflicts individually as they come up. Also, installing without Recommends will help with this.

If you just want to test different desktops, it might be cleaner to test in a virtual machine.

Default applications in the system are controlled by the alternatives system. Generally, the last app of any particular type that gets installed is the one that is preferred.  See man update-alternatives and ls -l /etc/alternatives/ for more information.

n-m vs. wicd: In this case, it's the desktop environments that pulled them in. You could probably avoid this by installing things in pieces as described above.

I tried dice's qemu command (without the sudo) and my iso boots as cdrom or as disk. I'm pretty sure the problem is in the initramfs.

dice, please run:

lsinitramfs /initrd.img | egrep "resume|cryptroot|crypttab|askpass"

file -L /initrd.img

Perfect!!!

Here's the fix.
1. Make a backup copy of /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume
    If you don't ever hibernate your computer, this step is not really necessary.
2. As root, edit /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume so that it contains only the following:
   RESUME=none
   Save the file.
3. Run update-initramfs -u
4. Make a new snapshot.

5. (Optional) If you do use hibernate, you need to undo what you did. Copy the original resume file back to where it was and run 'update-initramfs -u' again. If you do that, you'll have to do this whole procedure every time you want to make a snapshot.

I don't see anything helpful in the log. It all looks good. Are there any messages above the boot error other than the ones you posted?

Mount the usb and run

lsinitramfs /media/computerbob/liveiso/live/initrd.img | grep resume

to see if conf/conf.d/resume exists. It should not be there, and if it is, that may be the problem.

Right. You need to find the problem with the initrd. Look in the log to see what went wrong in the iso build process.

This is the mountpoint for the usb:
/media/computerbob/

The volume label on the iso file is liveiso, so that's the usb stick, and the symlinks point to two directories on that usb.
liveiso/isolinux
liveiso/pkglist_snapshot-20210311_1353

So where are the symlinks? If they are on the usb, then

ls /media/computerbob/liveiso

should list

boot.ini isolinux live package_list pkglist_snapshot-20210311_1353

I'm guessing this is the ventoy usb and not the isohybrid usb. boot.ini sounds like a windows thing.

Here's a live-iso I made today. It's a proof-of-concept, experimental, unofficial, and it looks like it works just fine.
Beowulf, LXDE, it has both lxdm and lightdm with lxdm the active display manager. I forgot to remove lightdm. To change the default, run dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

There's not much more than what comes with lxde. Just a few apps. No gimp or libreoffice.

https://get.refracta.org/files/experime … 2_0818.iso

Login: Password
user:user
root:root

sha256sum:
6d4247852ea41865b0f1977ea88f8399f6ddab4b55c91da079ce1536c443b859  snapshot_beowulf_lxde_amd64-20210312_0818.iso

I've never used ventoy, so I'm not sure how it arranges things. If it lets you boot live-isos that are on the usb, then I would guess that the first thing you'd see would be the refractasnapshot boot menu, which is just an isolinux boot menu. It lists several different boot options. It does not list any install options. So I'm not sure where you were.

It's an isohybrid image, so you could directly image a spare usb stick with it and boot the live system.

The iso you made with refractasnapshot should be an exact copy of the system that made it, with a few things excluded so it will boot properly and also to remove some private stuff. And you should be able to install it from a live-usb or live-cd/dvd.

And yes, it should work the first time without knowing what you're doing, as long as you don't ask it to copy your whole music and video collection. If you look under the hood, you can modify it to do things differently.

If you mean the subdirectories in your home for MUSIC PICTURES and whatever else, that would be xdg-user-dirs and xdg-utils. If those are installed, look in /etc/xdg/ if you want to edit the configs. There are a few xdg- commands, too. You might be interested in xdg-user-dirs-update.

If you mean /home/<username> does not exist, then you somehow failed to create a user during the installation. You would have had to say no when asked if you wanted to create a user. In an already-installed system, the adduser command does all the things you need to create a user. You can change those defaults in /etc/adduser.conf.

I added a few more services to runit using the three-step procedure I posted above.
- copy the sample files to /etc/sv/
- stop the service with  /etc/init.d/<service> stop
- add the service with  update-service --add /etc/sv/<service>

Added dbus, elogind, lightdm and all seems to be working.

# sv status /etc/sv/*
run: /etc/sv/acpid: (pid 1894) 1238s; run: log: (pid 1891) 1238s
down: /etc/sv/anacron: 1238s, normally up; run: log: (pid 1895) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/cron: (pid 1874) 1238s; run: log: (pid 1872) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/dbus: (pid 1885) 1238s; run: log: (pid 1884) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/elogind: (pid 1886) 1238s; run: log: (pid 1883) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/getty-tty1: (pid 1873) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/getty-tty2: (pid 1852) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/getty-tty3: (pid 1855) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/getty-tty4: (pid 1853) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/getty-tty5: (pid 1876) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/getty-tty6: (pid 1869) 1238s
warning: /etc/sv/getty-ttyS0: unable to open supervise/ok: file does not exist
run: /etc/sv/lightdm: (pid 1878) 1238s; run: log: (pid 1877) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/mdadm: (pid 1901) 1238s; run: log: (pid 1900) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/network-manager: (pid 1871) 1238s; run: log: (pid 1870) 1238s
run: /etc/sv/ssh: (pid 1899) 1238s; run: log: (pid 1898) 1238s

Edit: fixed typo. Thanks.

I'm not sure if I got the logging right. NetworkManager is working, but puts very little in the runit logs and puts more in syslog. It was spamming the syslog with everything it did until I added --log-level=ERR to the start command.

Also, mdadm gives an error (-1) when it stops. But it seems to be running. I don't have any raid array to test it right now.

pstree:

      ├─runsvdir─┬─6*[runsv───getty]
      │          ├─runsv─┬─acpid
      │          │       └─svlogd
      │          ├─runsv─┬─NetworkManager───2*[{NetworkManager}]
      │          │       └─svlogd
      │          ├─runsv─┬─sshd
      │          │       └─svlogd
      │          ├─runsv─┬─cron
      │          │       └─logger
      │          ├─runsv─┬─mdadm
      │          │       └─svlogd
      │          ├─runsv─┬─haveged
      │          │       └─svlogd
      │          └─runsv───svlogd

NetworkManager messages in syslog:
# on stopping network-manager:

Feb 28 02:25:08 chimaera-2 dbus-daemon[1506]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' requested by ':1.35' (uid=0 pid=2919 comm="/usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon --log-level=E") (using servicehelper)
Feb 28 02:25:08 chimaera-2 dbus-daemon[1506]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher'

# on starting network-manager

Feb 28 02:26:50 chimaera-2 dbus-daemon[1506]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' requested by ':1.38' (uid=0 pid=3006 comm="/usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon --log-level=E") (using servicehelper)
Feb 28 02:26:50 chimaera-2 dbus-daemon[1506]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher'

network-manager runit log on exit:

2021-02-28_02:25:09.02206 invoke-run: network-manager : run exit code is 0
2021-02-28_02:25:09.02209 invoke-run: network-manager stopped

mdadm runit log error on exit:

2021-02-28_01:26:40.87497 invoke-run: ERROR -1 in mdadm: runscript didn't exit normally
2021-02-28_01:26:40.87504 invoke-run: mdadm : run exit code is -1
2021-02-28_01:26:40.87505 invoke-run: mdadm stopped

network-manager/log/run

#!/bin/sh
set -e

NAME=network-manager
LOG="/var/log/runit/$NAME"

test -d "$LOG" || mkdir "$LOG" && chown -R _runit-log:adm "$LOG"
exec chpst -u _runit-log svlogd -tt "$LOG"

mdadm/log/run

#!/bin/sh

NAME=mdadm
LOG="/var/log/runit/$NAME"

test -d "$LOG" || mkdir "$LOG" && chown -R _runit-log:adm "$LOG"
exec chpst -u _runit-log svlogd -tt "$LOG"

Lorenzo, thanks for helping us with this and thanks for doing it.

Tested. And it does work just as it is. I haven't tried dbus yet.

1. /etc/init.d/network-manager stop
2.  copy files into /etc/sv/network-manager
3. update-service --add network-manager
4. (maybe)  sv start network-manager    Not sure if you need to do this. I started/stopped and check status a bunch of times until I was able to get the logging out of the syslog.

Here are the files I used:

network-manager/run

#!/bin/sh -e
## uncomment the following if you have dbus as runit service
#sv start dbus && sv check dbus || exit 1
exec 2>&1
exec /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon

network-manager/log/run

#!/bin/sh
set -e

NAME=network-manager
LOG="/var/log/runit/$NAME"

test -d "$LOG" || mkdir "$LOG" && chown -R _runit-log:adm "$LOG"
exec chpst -u _runit-log svlogd -tt "$LOG"

network-manager/finish

#!/bin/sh
set -e

. /lib/runit/finish-default "$@"

I also set up mdadm with runit. I used the same procedure as above with the sample runscripts but had to change the last line in mdadm/log/run from a hard-coded log file to "$LOG". That file looks like this now:

#!/bin/sh

NAME=mdadm
LOG="/var/log/runit/$NAME"

test -d "$LOG" || mkdir "$LOG" && chown -R _runit-log:adm "$LOG"
exec chpst -u _runit-log svlogd -tt "$LOG"