I am installing Devuan to a 256GB NVMe drive on a server w/ 256GB of RAM. I often opt to go with the guided install as it makes an encrypted root system easy. However, I was greeted with an error about not being able to use the guided install as the install disk isn't large enough - due to the system choosing the same size swap as amount of RAM in the server, naturally. And, naturally at least as far as I can tell, there is no way to change the size of that swap partition prior to the guided install attempt.

Now, I am still here in the datacenter trying to do a manual install, trying different things, as it's choking during grub installation.

After manually creating my partition which was confusing and not very intuitive - at least in the respect of setting up LVMs for the encrypted filesystem - I got the system to install. At grub installation it fails with a message in the log regarding (paraphrasing, as I've rebooted now and trying other things ) "installing for an encrypted system but blah blah.. make sure GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y is in the /etc/default/grub config". I tried putting that in /target/etc/default/grub to no avail. Also of note is that I cannot boot off of my PCI-e NVMes with this server and a BIOS upgrade - which also failed earlier leaving me to have to do a BIOS image recovery - did not give the option, so as a result I opt to install grub to a USB thumb drive. However, because of these grub errors, I cannot install the system.

Is the installer not creating the proper configuration for grub when using disk encryption because of something not done during setup? I am creating a physical /boot partition, the 'use for encrypted volume' option on a logical partition, then to Configure encrypted filesystems and create them, THEN to Create Logical Volumes and I create a volume group and a LVM with the 200GB partition in it, and then again in the partition manager assign that as ext4 mounted at '/' as the root. Again the system does install just fine to the disk its that grub for whatever reason is not aware and doesn't do whatever it needs to for the crypto setup?

.. so this is why I normally opt to have it done for me fully guided. So, is there any way to change the amount of swap space that is going to be created PRIOR to the partitioning, disable it, anything? Hard choking without enough disk space because the swap is so darn large is silly and should be put in the trash can along with other kludge like systemd. ;D

Thanks,

data

First post here, hello everyone. Just wanted to extend my thank you to the developers for their work. I for one believe all systemd processes should be put down with extreme prejudice, and finding that a dedicated team took my favorite distribution and forked it out of the insanity is comforting. That being said I have been running Devuan as a production server in my datacenter on a few boxen for about eight months and have had a pretty positive experience. (Two questions were cross-posted on reddit/r/devuan, plz ignore any double answers if youre annoyed)

My new personal server is pretty beefy and I want to virtualize, but I am using Devuan as the base. (I use VMware on everything else usually) As a result I want a desktop environment instead of a bunch of tmux windows so I will have an easier time with VBox. I haven't setup an X server in a very long time (the last time I ran X on the desktop was circa 1998!), so - is it possible to setup a X environment easily on Devuan that will allow me to connect to the X server remotely?

GETTING TO THE QUESTION:
Preferably with an X client, but I hear things about stuff like NoMachine, XorgXrdp(?) and other VNC-like tech that implement individual desktops instead of one desktop that will be logged in if someone plugged in. I need security and peace of mind-- all access to the server is done over a IPSec VPN to the local network, and only my computer is allowed thru the firewall on the server itself, so an easier road to configuration would be nice.

To my end I installed a buttload of X packages (w/ 'cinnamon' as the WM), changed to allow any user to run X, added my user to tty group, etc. and still when I launch 'startx' I get an error about not being able to access "virtual console 7". IIRC tty7 was a dedicated X window display and that's not what I want necessarily. My desktop needs to preferably be virtual and as much non-root-level as possible (with X that's asking a lot still now a days I assume?).

Thanks in advance

d.s.