Thought I would bump this old topic on it.

I really have no interest in using it, I'm perfectly happy with sysvinit. But I like that someone is doing it.

I commented out a few lines for systemd in the makefile. I might have added some lines to the makefile.
Also created 0190-runit live-config script. (in components directory)

For runit, I had to fork live-config.

I might take a look at that (for anything obvious) when I have the chance.
Thanks for the great refracta tools fsmithred.

In the past, when I made snapshots of a system using openrc, I didn't have to do anything special. It just worked. For runit, I had to fork live-config.

@Prowler_Gr did you switch from “elogind” to “seatd + consolekit” in your Devuan ‘init-diversity’ spin?

It is all using elogind for Devuan, but I noticed ConsoleKit2 making its way back into sid.
I have pulled it into my s6-experimental repo to test against my various spins.

& reboot into s6-66

I did, three times, and it works fine and that ModemManager error has gone away. 

This is a pretty good laboratory to learn about the most popular alternative inits.  Looking forward to using this.  My first thought is that runit seems to run faster and smoother.  Let the web searching/reading/learning about alternative inits begin!  At least for me anyway.

Thank you for your time, and your assistance Prowler_Gr.

Try the following

sudo 66 configure -e nano boot@system

Find FSTAB=!no & change it to FSTAB=!yes
& save the change

Then apply the change by running

sudo 66 reconfigure boot@system

& reboot into s6-66

I did a physical install on a 13 year old dell server.  I made no changes at all, except for a user account name change and password change during installation.  I simply installed and tested.  My testing was centered on simply booting up, logging in, and rebooting into the next init. 

After installing all inits (boot options) worked fine, except s6-66.  My partition scheme is:

sda is a msdos master boot record, not gpt.
/  is /sda1
/home is /sda2
swap is /sda3
/mnt/data1 is sdb1

The first boot into s6-66, I got the same ModemManager error as reported above:

The system was not in a usable state so I was not able to view the log files, either locally or with ssh.  The second boot attempt I did not see that error and I got to the lightdm login screen.  The regular user was not able to login.  A login attempt with the correct user/pass just refreshed the page.  However, the root user was able to login.  Further checking:

ls -a /home

 
showed the entire /home folder as empty.  The /home partition did not get mounted at boot.  A manual mount of /home did work and then I was able to login.  I searched the log files and I found no mention about a mount error.  My fstab is:

I did notice that the s6-66 reversed the partitions sda -> sdb, sdb -> sda.  This was as far as I got with s6-66 as the third and 4th boot attempts produced the same modemmanager error. 

So, to recap, the s6-66 method did not mount the /home partition correctly at boot on the couple of times that it did work correctly.

If you can tell me what to check I will be glad to test further.  But without an error notation in a log file, I don't know where to start and I am very unfamiliar with inits.  I am not a very good tester, but I did have some time to test.

I thought the default selection was sysvinit, but the sysvinit selection works fine.  I have not checked the grub entries for any difference between the two selections.

The default points to /sbin/init. The user might opt to symlink this to another prefered init to have as default & purge what he doesn't want.
The (sysvinit) entry points to /lib/sysvinit/init

That's what I'm guessing. I've tested this install on a windows hosted virtualbox, & proper partition install on 2 different laptops (a newish uefi only HP envy & an old Toshiba sattelite which I boot in bios/csm mode) & I didn't get this behaviour.

It would be great if you could spare a partition to do a proper metal install & see if you get the same experience with your hardware.

At boot:

grub default selection - It worked fine the first boot, and maybe the second, and then it didn't.  When it did not successfully boot -

I logged in as root and  ran

"service lightdm start" will start the X session (lightdm) from the physical console of the virtual machine.  I successfully started Xfce by logging in as the user and entering "startxfce4".  I made some text bold to make it stand out, as it raised some questions with me.

While it was not successfully booted into X, I ssh(ed) into the machine and got this information:
/home/user/.xsession-errors

/var/log/lightdm/seat0-greeter.log
# cat /var/log/lightdm/seat0-greeter.log

/var/log/syslog
noting mentioned, warnings or errors regarding xorg or lightdm

Just to document what package if any had systemd mentioned -
root@init-diversity:/home/craig# dpkg -l | grep systemd
ii  dhcpcd   1:9.4.1-24~deb12u3     all  DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 dual-stack client (init.d script and systemd unit)

So, sometimes it works, sometimes it does not and I can't report what is wrong.  I thought the default selection was sysvinit, but the sysvinit selection works fine.  I have not checked the grub entries for any difference between the two selections.

grub sysvinit selection - it worked fine.
grub s6-rc selection - it worked fine.

grub s6-66 selection - fails to boot.
boot hangs with the message on screen that:

A virtualbox driver issue perhaps?  Repeated attempts with this method does the same thing with the same message.

grub runit selection - it worked fine.
This was my first time using runit and was very impressed with its speed and smoothness.

grub openrc selection - fails to boot.
I get the same or similar error messages as using sysvinit.
/home/user/.xsession-errors

cat /var/log/lightdm/seat0-greeter.log
(entire log, nothing excluded)

On the physical VM screen, it hangs at:

This or whatever it is trying to load next, but is not displayed yet, may be the problem.

My changes to the default installed system:
Removed vim and firmware-libertas firmware-myricom firmware-netxen firmware-qlogic ti-connectivity firmware-atheros firmware-bnx2x firmware-brcm80211
Installed gtkhash thunar-gtkhash libb2-1 geany autofs

I will be glad to assist in troubleshooting.  Please let me know.  This is an easy to use way to test and experiment with multiple init systems within the same install.  This is a very interesting concept.

Edit:  corrected typing mistakes.

Download link:
Devuan-5.0_xfce_init-diversity-edition_amd64_UNOFFICIAL_20240319

This includes 5 inits (sysvinit – s6-rc – s6-66 – OpenRC - runit),  4 able to run live (except OpenRC) & available to install (OpenRC included).

@fsmithred, I used refractasnapshot to create this iso, OpenRC installs & boots as expected while installed, however for some reason I was unable to get it to boot directly from the live iso. Unsure if this issue is related to refracta, or the debian live tools, but it maybe worth troubleshooting.

Credits for should go to all contributors & testers of the original 'init-diversity' antiX-23 spins, especially anticapitalista of antiX, aitor of Gnuinos, Eric of Obarun, & all the antiX forum members testing my builds.