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Dev1User

Member

Registered: 2022-05-16

Posts: 20  

Upgrade from Devuan Daedalus 32-bit to Excalibur

Hello!

I was just about to upgrade my current 32-bit Daedalus system to Excalibur. While reading through the release notes, I came across the following problem.

It says:

Reduced support for i386

## Getting Devuan 6 Excalibur

Devuan 6 Excalibur is available for i386, amd64, armel, armhf, arm64, ppc64el and
riscv64 architectures. However, the i386 packages don't include a linux-image. See
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/ … t-for-i386
for details.

Then I clicked on the link and it says the following:

5.1.2. Reduced support for i386

From trixie, i386 is no longer supported as a regular architecture: there is no official kernel and no Debian installer for i386 systems. Fewer packages are available for i386 because many projects no longer support it. The architecture’s sole remaining purpose is to support running legacy code, for example, by way of multiarch or a chroot on a 64-bit (amd64) system.

The i386 architecture is now only intended to be used on a 64-bit (amd64) CPU. Its instruction set requirements include SSE2 support, so it will not run successfully on most of the 32-bit CPU types that were supported by Debian 12.

Users running i386 systems should not upgrade to trixie. Instead, Debian recommends either reinstalling them as amd64, where possible, or retiring the hardware. Cross-grading without a reinstall is a technically possible, but risky, alternative.

Now I'm wondering if I should even bother with an upgrade if it's hardly supported, or not supported at all? And whether the system will still run smoothly after the upgrade?

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,348  

Re: Upgrade from Devuan Daedalus 32-bit to Excalibur

There won't be any more kernels for i386. Debian decision with consequences for Devuan. You may look around for other distros.

There is at least one thread in this forum about this topic: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=7124 and I think there was another one.

Dev1User

Member

Registered: 2022-05-16

Posts: 20  

Re: Upgrade from Devuan Daedalus 32-bit to Excalibur

But what's strange is the following:

The release notes state:

## Getting Devuan 6 Excalibur

Devuan 6 Excalibur is available for i386, amd64, armel, armhf, arm64, ppc64el and riscv64 architectures. However, the i386 packages do not include a linux-image. See https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/ … t-for-i386 for details.

When I go to install Excalibur on Devuan, it says: Supported architectures: amd64.

And Excalibur is based on Trixie from Debian. Trixie Debian no longer supports 32-bit architectures. So why does Devuan then state that Excalibur is available for i386?

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,748  

Re: Upgrade from Devuan Daedalus 32-bit to Excalibur

Next paragraph in the release notes starts with:

Installer isos and live CDs for amd64 are available for download

And this section:

### Reduced support for i386

There is no i386 installer iso for Devuan 6 Excalibur, following Debian's
choice to remove their official i386 kernel and installer.

And if you look at the debian release notes it explains that you can run 32-bit in chroot or container.

I believe it's still possible to upgrade a 32-bit system. You won't get a new kernel, so if you have the kernel metapackage linux-image-686-pae you might need to remove it first. I'm not sure about that.

You can use a linux-libre kernel if you don't need proprietary (non-free) firmware.
see: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=7208

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,748  

Re: Upgrade from Devuan Daedalus 32-bit to Excalibur

I can now say that it's still possible to upgrade 32-bit daedalus to excalibur. I just did it.

I removed the kernel metapackage (linux-image-686-pae) and installed usrmerge.
Changed sources.list from daedalus to excalibur.
Installed linux-libre kernel 6.12.57-gnu
Ran apt update, apt upgrade, reboot, apt dist-upgrade, apt autoremove.
done
Rebooted again just to be sure.

Dev1User

Member

Registered: 2022-05-16

Posts: 20  

Re: Upgrade from Devuan Daedalus 32-bit to Excalibur

So, can I simply integrate a linux-libre kernel into Devuan, Daedalus, or Excalibur? Do I just need to follow the steps on the website fsfla.org to get a working system? Or is there anything else I need to do?

And what will the sources.list look like? Will I receive updates from Devuan, for example, and kernel updates specifically from linux-libre?

And is linux-libre systemd-free?

Sounds like a lot of work.

Or I could just stick with Daedalus, which is Bookworm and will probably be supported until 2028.

I've been looking around on Distrowatch. The following systems might be options:

1. Gnuinos. Based on Devuan and uses the Linux-libre kernel.
2. Refracta. Based on Debian, Devuan = systemd-free.
3. Fluxuan Linux. Based on Devuan.
4. Loc-OS. Based on antiX, Debian. Also systemd-free.
5. Adélie Linux.

So I should follow the instructions from Devuan - Upgrade to Excalibur: https://www.devuan.org/os/documentation … -excalibur

So you've installed usrmerge and changed the sources.list to Excalibur. And now I have to install the linux-libre kernel first and only then follow the other steps in the Devuan upgrade installation instructions?

I'll test it out. If that doesn't work, I'll take a closer look at the systems from Distrowatch.

Thanks.

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,748  

Re: Upgrade from Devuan Daedalus 32-bit to Excalibur

Yes, follow the instructions on the linux-libre site. Install their key, add their sources file, update, install.
You'll still have the devuan sources active and can upgrade packages. The kernel will come from the freesh sources.

Note: I pasted the 'modernized' sources below. It's possible to use the modernized source for freesh along with the older sources.list for the devuan sources. I just tested it and 'apt update' didn't complain.

Here's an example iso of 32-bit devuan with the linux-libre kernel. Refracta is just devuan with some tweaks and different set of packages. This one is old. I need to make new isos and stop calling them Testing.
https://get.refracta.org/files/testing/ … 5_1010.iso

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/devuan.sources (generated by running 'modernize-sources')

# Modernized from /etc/apt/sources.list
Types: deb
URIs: http://deb.devuan.org/merged/
Suites: excalibur excalibur-security excalibur-updates
Components: main 
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/devuan-archive-keyring.gpg

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/freesh.sources

X-Repolib-Name: GNU Linux-libre Freesh Repository
Enabled: yes
Types: deb
URIs: mirror://linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/freesh/mirrors.txt
Suites: freesh
Components: main
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/freesh-archive-keyring.gpg

Dev1User

Member

Registered: 2022-05-16

Posts: 20  

Re: Upgrade from Devuan Daedalus 32-bit to Excalibur

@fsmithred

I followed your instructions and then the directions on FSFLA and Devuan. I was able to successfully install the Linux-libre kernel.

I opted for the LTS version and have now installed version 6.12.57-gnu.

I was pleased that it worked. The Excalibur installation was also successful.

However, after booting the system, I saw errors, and when I logged in, the screen displayed "GDBus.Error".

I was able to photograph the following errors during boot:

INIT: version 3.14 booting
INIT: No inittab.d directory found
Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel S.
Starting hot-plug events dispatcher: udevd[   10.992891] udevd[357]: GOTO ´alsa_restore_std´ has no matching label in: ´/usr/lib/udev/rules.d/90-alsa-restore.rules´
[   10.993027] udevd[357]: GOTO ´alsa_restore_std´ has no matching label in: ´/usr/lib/udev/rules.d/90-alsa-restore.rules´
.
Synthesizing the initial hotplug events (subsystems)...done.
Synthesizing the initial hotplug events (devices)...done.
Waiting for /dev to be fully populated...([   14.667087]: Missing Free Firmware (non-Free firmware loading is disabled)
[   14.667182] radeon_cp: Failed to load firmware "/*(DEBLOBBED)*/"
[   14.667189] [drm:r100_cp_init [radeon]] *ERROR* Failed to load firmware
[   14.667321] radeon: failed initializing CP (-2).
[   14.667331] radeon: Disabling GPU acceleration
[   14.848947] Error: Driver ´pcspkr´ is already registered, aborting...
[   20.710713] udevd[361]: Unknown key identifier ´zoom´
done.

These were the errors. After logging into lightdm, I got to the start screen and saw the following message:

GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Manager.Error.General: Unable to lookup session information for process '2284'

This number at the end changes constantly after the boot process when I log in again and get to the start screen.

And Daedalus didn't have these errors. Everything worked fine.

I checked and all Linux firmware is installed, including the non-free firmware. I deleted it and reinstalled it. But unfortunately, all without success.

It's a Lenovo T60 laptop. Graphics card is: AMD/ATI RV515/M54 [Mobility Radeon X1400]

If I choose the non-LTS kernel in Linux-libre, the errors will probably still occur, since it's an older system. And the Linux-libre-lts couldn't find any matching kernel headers.

Are these errors occurring because Linux-libre doesn't support non-free firmware? How can these errors be corrected? Is there even a way to do this?

The Linux distributions I described above, and Refracta as well, largely use linux-libre. So they won't provide the solution either, will they?

Last edited by Dev1User (Today 21:33:22)

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,748  

Re: Upgrade from Devuan Daedalus 32-bit to Excalibur

It says you're missing free firmware. Make sure firmware-linux-free is installed. If you need non-free firmware, you won't be able to use a libre kernel. Have you tried booting the daedalus kernel? It should still be there.

The alsa error has a fix somewhere else on this forum. Search for alsa_restore and I think you'll find it. It's an easy fix.

Also make sure the video drivers are installed. I'm not sure which you need but there's xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon