Also, thanks for trying ExeGNU. Investigating this led to finding some other (minor) issues and solutions for the next version.

TDE is outside the mainstream for mostly conventional and political reasons. TDE has run almost flawlessly on a Devuan base since 2017, with no systemd dependencies and is still actively developed. ExeGNU is  simply Devuan + TDE installable Live ISO.

EDIT: but with it's own potential flaws!

So I tried a fresh installation: new image download, the same usb-stick, another target machine (asus b550 board). After installation the libdb5.3 was properly installed, off course now mpv starts without any problem.

So something was wrong with my download, thats what I guess. the image absolutely is on order.

Thanks & regards
Berni

The commands I posted earlier from the qemu live usb session returned exactly the same in the new install. A video clip opened in mpv plays without error.

apt update && apt install claws-mail

gives me claws-mail in the menu which opens as expected.

So I'm in the dark what happened to you but still curious to know why..

EDIT: also, cuyo installs and opens here (although I don't understand how to use it), mpv still working after.

After installation the libdb5.3 was indicated as "installed", but /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdb-5.3.so was not an object file but an empty softlink instead. Additionally there was a libdb-5.3.a file. Now, after installing the newer deb everything looks good.

Meanwhile I believe that during installation some bits may be broken.

I will test a fresh installation on another machine with the same image later today.

Regards
Berni

PS: The problem off course had nothing to do witch mpv. claws-mail, cuyo e.g. also failed.

user@exegnu:~$ dpkg -l|grep libdb5.3t64
ii  libdb5.3t64:amd64                    5.3.28+dfsg2-9                               amd64        Berkeley v5.3 Database Libraries [runtime]
user@exegnu:~$ ls /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu|grep libdb
libdb-5.3.so
libdbus-1.so.3
libdbus-1.so.3.38.3

Shows that libdb5.3t64 is installed and the suspect file is actually present. Also:

user@exegnu:~$ dpkg -l|grep mpv
ii  mpv                                  0.40.0-3+deb13u1                             amd64        video player based on MPlayer/mplayer2

Shows mpv to be already installed.

So far I can't reproduce this error and mpv (here) works as expected.

The correct md5sum of exegnu64_excalibur-20251119.iso is: 3c606f377ac22b56ea4981ebeb54c25b

Does this match the ISO you used to install?

libdb5.3t64 is installed, but thats probably not, what mpv and others want.

Looks like it is: https://packages.debian.org/trixie/amd6 … 4/filelist:

In the meantime, thanks for trying ExeGNU and pointing out that error. I won't have time to investigate more till much later or tomorrow.

Also, what version did you install?

For me some apps were missing and so I installed claws-mail, mpv and cuyo (my favourite game currently). But none of these applications could be started:

mpv: error while loading shared libraries: libdb-5.3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

libdb5.3t64 is installed, but thats probably not, what mpv and others want.

Any hint for me?

Regards
Berni