My script for comparing the package lists is spammed with packages that are different only in architecture. Here's a simper diff showing what mate packages we have. Anything that starts with a + is one that I have and you don't. Anything that starts with - is one you have that I don't. The only one of those is mate-tweak, and when I added it (without Recommends) it didn't fix the problem. Not sure where to go with this now.

$ diff -u mlevd-list my-mate-list | grep "^[\+|\-]mate"
+mate-applet-brisk-menu 0.5.0-9
+mate-applets 1.20.3-2
+mate-applets-common 1.20.3-2
+mate-backgrounds 1.20.0-2
+mate-calc 1.20.3-1
+mate-calc-common 1.20.3-1
+mate-desktop-environment 1.20.0+5
+mate-desktop-environment-core 1.20.0+5
+mate-icon-theme-faenza 1.20.0+dfsg1-2
-mate-polkit:i386 1.20.2-1
+mate-polkit:amd64 1.20.2-1
+mate-screensaver 1.20.3-3
+mate-screensaver-common 1.20.3-3
+mate-system-monitor 1.20.2-1
+mate-system-monitor-common 1.20.2-1
-mate-tweak 18.10.2-1
+mate-themes 3.22.18-1
+mate-user-guide 1.20.2-1
+mate-utils 1.20.2-3
+mate-utils-common 1.20.2-3

Note: That vertical bar that we use to pipe the output of one command to another is called a pipe. Or it could mean "OR" when there are two in a row.

Yes, I can reproduce this stupid bug in 64-bit beowulf mate. It's not a problem in xfce, because you don't have to "add" a picture in your settings if you copy the file into the folder that holds the other bg images. Xfce shows you all the image files in the selected directory.

Does mate not do this in debian?

Ah, I didn't see that. Yeah the actual file is farther down the page. That first screenshot is the output of pacmd list-cards

When I run that command, I get "No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as a session daemon."  So I can't find what the active profile is to put the line in default.pa

ps ax shows that it's running and that the --start option was used, which should make it run as a daemon. That's what the man page says.

There are a bunch of error messages about pulseaudio in the syslog, but they may be related to settings for the screen reader. They're complaining about a run file for user lightdm. I think I should stop here. It may not be a good comparison.

MLEvD, I hope you have better luck. Are you sure you need pulseaudio? Maybe plain alsa would behave better.

I had to look up that term to see what it meant. Audacious does gapless playback. I just tested. It went from Mona to Maiden of the Cander Moon without missing a beat. (Quicksilver Messenger Service). And unlike deadbeef (which I like a lot) audacious is in the repo.

It does playlists, but I never bother with them, so I don't know how good or bad they are.

I can confirm that setting to output only is not saved across reboots. Tested amd64 mate in a qemu virtual machine. This happens to be an install with speech synthesis enabled (screen reader) but that probably doesn't matter.

I can also confirm that /etc/pulse/default.pa does not look anything like the one in the mycomputertips help page.

I don't see any bugs about settings not saved, but there are a couple about crashing mate-volume-control (the Sound Preferences app)
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgrepo … mate-media

I also poked around in ~/.config/pulse and found 141 binary files. No help there.

I think it means we were successful. The init diversity team made up of devuan and debian developers working together have been around for over a year. You may notice that some debian packages that rely on systemd now rely on systemd or elogind. Every time that happens, that's one less package we have to fork.

I will be playing with it some more for chimaera and will post here with any useful updates.

Another way to make a live iso that tends to be easier is with refractasnapshot. It makes a copy of your installed system and packs it into a bootable live-iso. You could build a system in a VM, and when you get it the way you want it, make the snapshot. It's in the devuan repo.
https://refracta.org/docs/readme.refractasnapshot.txt

Line 40 of blends/devuan-minimal-live/devuan-minimal-live.blend needs closing quotes on the login/password.

echo "${username}:${userpass} | chpasswd || exit 1

echo "${username}:${userpass}" | chpasswd || exit 1

Watch out for the arch setting. I found it in live-sdk/config and it's also in my blend config. Both were set to amd64. It does not work in the blend config file. It must be set in live-sdk/config. I just tested that.

I don't have tmp/devuan-amd64-build/bootstrap/ after the build is done. It all gets wrapped up in stage3 and stage4 tarballs. Unpacking the tarballs does not restore the bootstrap dir.

FWIW, I ran this version of the live-sdk yesterday and made a desktop-live iso that works. I'm running a minimal-live build now, after adding the missing quote. Will be back soon with results.

Just for the record, I don't use runit, but I'm commited enough to the idea of diversity in the ecosystem that I'm willing to do some testing or make it easy for other to test. Last year I made a live-iso based on devuan beowulf that uses runit so that people could try it. I know there are a few people using runit in devuan.

I made another live-iso based on chimaera (bullseye) but I haven't uploaded it yet. That might happen soon.

About my issues:
Skip to the end to see that it's fixed. I used the advice you gave to xinomilo for haveged.

Longer version:
I switched it back to sysvinit for cron and anacron and managed to get my test script to work.
Then switched it back to runit, commented set -e and added set -x (the latter did nothing) and also set VERBOSE and DEBUG. Then I started cron manually with # /usr/sbin/cron -f

Got the following:

2021-02-11_13:54:02.22150 invoke-run: ERROR -1 in anacron: runscript didn't exit normally
2021-02-11_13:54:02.22156 invoke-run: anacron : run exit code is -1
2021-02-11_13:54:02.22157 invoke-run: anacron stopped
2021-02-11_13:59:00.98343 invoke-run: ERROR -1 in anacron: runscript didn't exit normally
2021-02-11_13:59:00.98348 invoke-run: anacron : run exit code is -1
2021-02-11_13:59:00.98349 invoke-run: anacron stopped

# ps ax | grep runsvdir
 1384 ?        Ss     0:01 runsvdir -P /etc/service log: ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
 4373 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep runsvdir

# sylog
Feb 11 13:43:13 chimaera-2 runsv-cron: invoke-run: ERROR -1 in cron: runscript didn't exit normally
Feb 11 13:52:59 chimaera-2 runsv-cron: invoke-run: ERROR -1 in cron: runscript didn't exit normally
Feb 11 13:52:59 chimaera-2 runsv-cron: invoke-run: cron : run exit code is -1
Feb 11 13:52:59 chimaera-2 runsv-cron: invoke-run: cron stopped
Feb 11 13:54:16 chimaera-2 runsv-cron: invoke-run: ERROR -1 in cron: runscript didn't exit normally
Feb 11 13:54:16 chimaera-2 runsv-cron: invoke-run: cron : run exit code is -1
Feb 11 13:54:16 chimaera-2 runsv-cron: invoke-run: cron stopped

Saw your advice to xinomilo and did the same -
- remove the symlinks in /etc/init.d/
- dpkg-divert --remove /etc/init.d/<service>
- sv e cron

# sv status cron
run: cron: (pid 4615) 696s; run: log: (pid 4614) 696s

Thanks!

Got an answer in irc:

Oh yeah, pmount. Try this -
https://sourceforge.net/projects/refrac … nt-1.2.deb

It works for removable USB, CD and mmc devices. Add any fixed drives to /etc/pmount.allow.