I guess it's about as safe as it ever was to use outside repos in debian. As long as they don't require systemd, it should be ok. You might run into problems if something expects to see debian and doesn't recognize devuan. Check forum and mailing list archives for discussions about specific apps.

For the record: If you install from one of the live isos, you would choose to encrypt the root filesystem and not select a separate partition for /boot. That's all. The installer will add the line to /etc/default/grub.

I'm pretty sure I tried refractasnapshot and installer in heads some time ago. I think it works if you add the live-config packages. Newest version of the installer is 9.5.3 and it's in ascii, beowulf and ceres. You don't need to change sources.list for that. Just update the package cache and install what you want.

Either install one of the unsigned kernels (e.g. linux-image-4.19.0-2-amd64-unsigned) or change the name of the bootloader directory from EFI/devuan to EFI/debian.

Standard methods for persistence won't work with Heads because live-config is not installed. There might be another way to do it, but I don't know how. You could make your own heads iso with live-sdk and add live-config and live-config-sysvinit to the package lists. (I haven't tested that but it should work.)

Keep in mind that full-persistence can reduce security. The read-only system is always clean when you boot up - every boot is the first time. If you just want to be able to save files, create another partition and mount it somewhere in your home.

Something must have changed recently. I have an ascii install that has ascii-backports, beowulf and ceres all pinned to 100, and yesterday I noticed that apt-cache policy was telling me that ceres had the Candidate version.

I just changed those pin priorities to 99 and checked again. Now backports has the candidate, and the backports priority shows as 100 even when I've got it set to 99 in my preferences.

It should be showing me the ascii version as the candidate.

Pin-Priority: 100 (on ascii-backports, beowulf and ceres)

user@ascii:~$ apt-cache policy debootstrap
debootstrap:
  Installed: 1.0.89+devuan2
  Candidate: 1.0.114+devuan1
  Version table:
     1.0.114+devuan1 100
        100 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ceres/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110+devuan1 100
        100 http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110~bpo9+1 100
        100 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-backports/main amd64 Packages
 *** 1.0.89+devuan2 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.0.89-devuan2.1 500
        500 http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii/main amd64 Packages

Pin-Priority: 99 (on ascii-backports, beowulf and ceres)

user@ascii:~$ apt-cache policy debootstrap
debootstrap:
  Installed: 1.0.89+devuan2
  Candidate: 1.0.110~bpo9+1
  Version table:
     1.0.114+devuan1 99
         99 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ceres/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110+devuan1 99
         99 http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110~bpo9+1 100
        100 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-backports/main amd64 Packages
 *** 1.0.89+devuan2 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.0.89-devuan2.1 500
        500 http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii/main amd64 Packages

Pin-Priority: 50 (on ascii-backports, beowulf and ceres)

user@ascii:~$ apt-cache policy debootstrap
debootstrap:
  Installed: 1.0.89+devuan2
  Candidate: 1.0.110~bpo9+1
  Version table:
     1.0.114+devuan1 50
         50 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ceres/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110+devuan1 50
         50 http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110~bpo9+1 100
        100 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-backports/main amd64 Packages
 *** 1.0.89+devuan2 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.0.89-devuan2.1 500
        500 http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii/main amd64 Packages

That log shows that you chose to re-use an existing home partition. If you did that with a new (empty) partition, it would have remained empty. If instead you had chosen the option to "Create a new separate home" it would have copied the files from /home in the live system to the home partition on the sd card.

You're not the first to be confused by this, but I hope you're the last. The option to re-use an existing home as been removed in the next version. 9.5.3 is in ceres, and I plan for it to be in the ascii point-release.

If you got a refractainstaller log in your home, I'd like to see it and try to figure out what went wrong. You can send it to me at gmail or paste it somewhere and provide the link.

Thanks.

Welcome to devuan. I used zenwalk for a year before switching to debian (etch) for its vast repository, so I understand where you're coming from.

The live installer has grown rather clunky, especially since adding support for uefi. It's due for an overhaul. I'm pleased you were able to install to an mmc device. I assume you used the graphical installer, and it showed your partitions correctly. You're the first I've heard of doing that, and I've been wondering if it really works.

Upgrade to beowulf will not mess with /usr or /sbin. It won't change your directories.

Welcome home! Not sure if you saw my no-dbus experiment: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=2158
I just happened to be looking at that again today with a mind to create a live-sdk blend for the no-dbus build. (live-sdk is for automated building of live-CD isos.)

Here's one I made (manually) in September. Um, two nodbus builds; i386 and amd64. The one with bpo in the name is ascii with backports kernel (and with dbus.)
https://get.refracta.org/files/experimental/

These isos are POC and fun, but probably not for production.

Thanks, for that. I can make those changes in a point release. I had made a couple isos in October that were under 700mb, but then I ran update/upgrade and the snapshots grew. The initrd should have already been xz compressed unless it somehow reverted during upgrades.

Package list is mostly the same. Dropped atril and all the mate system utils and put in xpdf. Forgot to add noscript in the i386. Probably forgot something else, too.

I thought refracta-lang was specific for lightdm. I switched to lxdm mainly because I was getting better results with other languages.

Speaking of beowulf, I had to make a couple of custom live-config scripts for it. One for lxdm so that it doesn't expect lxde, and one for openssh-server, which hangs on boot while waiting for enough entropy to make the host keys. That one is here - http://distro.ibiblio.org/refracta/file … sh-entropy

Suggested listing:
  ThomOS (formerly Crunkbong)

Siva, you didn't mention it, but login/password are thomos/thomos

System boots to console login. Login leads to automatic graphical session in openbox. I don't know how you got no autologin without adding 'noautologin' to the boot command, but you need to either add 'nox11autologin' or do something else to get rid of /etc/profile.d/zz-live-config_xinit.sh.

The boot item for foreign language does not work. The syntax 'lang=it_IT' is specific for lightdm along with refracta-lang, a custom live-config script for changing locale and keyboard at boot. I don't know if it still works. (you don't have that script, anyway). The standard method does work:
locales=it_IT.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=it

That's as far as I got for now. More later. Looks good so far.