OK, in the /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d directory, made a file called force_ext4 and put one line in it: "FSTYPE=ext4".

Ran "update-initramfs -u" to regenerate the init ram fs.

Upon lilo and then reboot, discovered that nothing.  I then tried the more forceful "update-initramfs -c -k <kernel version>," but that had no effect: still mounting "/" as ext2

I've no idea what's going on.

I think fstab should say '/dev/mapper/azura-dawn' instead of '/dev/azura/dawn'.

I've never had to do that before on the other distros. The other volumes are mounted the same way (things like /dev/azura/homie for /home) and that gets mounted correctly.

Oh crap, I'll bet it's the damn init ram disk when it first mounts "/". I really don't want to have to crack that open to fix it.

Manual. Had to, it's a multi-boot machine all on one LVM. Installers tend to get confused and/or want to wipe the entire disk.

~ $ mount | grep atime | grep dawn
/dev/mapper/azura-dawn on / type ext2 (rw,noatime,stripe=64)
~ $ grep dawn /etc/fstab
/dev/azura/dawn /                ext4     noatime             1     1
~ $

Unless I'm overlooking something, it seems as if I'm telling Devuan to mount the dawn LVM volume on "/" as ext4 and something has taken it upon itself to ignore the fstab and mount the drive as ext2, thus throwing out journaling and disabling discards.

Can anyone please explain?  Thank you.

edit: It's 64-bit Chimaera