I can! I can!

1. Make sure automount is NOT enabled for usb.
2. Plug in your thumb drive.
3. Run 'refracta2usb' from a root terminal (or sudo).
4. Click on the Help option. Read the first few paragraphs.

Keep in mind that it's like a Swiss army knife - it has a bunch of utensils in case you ever need them, but you'll probably never use all of them. Just pick the one(s) you need at any given time.

Hint: create a vfat that's big enough to fit a few isos and an ext partition for other uses, but don't use it yet. Get one iso running then talk to me about persistence (or read the rest of the Help).

If you get a popup error window and you see the word "rescan" in it, go back to the main menu and Rescan. (It happens a lot if you do multiple procedures in the same run. It's not a bug. That's just the way it is - stick gets unmounted after you do a task.)

Were you installing software in a chroot? That would account for /run being absent.

The error about missing /home/devuan is weird. I don't know what to say about that.

save_work=yes

Keep it that way unless you need to reclaim the space. (You already said you don't need to.) It will save time because rsync only copies changes after the first time.

Network problem: easily solved by adding 'net.ifnames=0' to the boot command. Since you saved your work, you can very easily add this in without running the whole process again. To test it, press TAB at boot menu and edit the line.
- Edit /home/work/iso/isolinux/live.cfg  (the boot menu)
- Run refractasnapshot again and choose the 4th option (Re-run xorriso, (make iso, no-copy, no squash). It'll take a minute or so.
   (Note: this will only work for changes in the root of the CD. It won't work for changes in the copied filesystem.)

Next time you do a full run, start it from terminal in debug mode -

refractasnapshot -d
or
refractasnapshot-gui -d

That's weird. Your wireless is new enough that it requires kernel version 4.1 or newer but the computer only boots with 3.16. (see https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en … 05511.html )
I still think playing with the boot options or going into the bios to turn stuff off is where the solution lies.

BTW, some isos made with refractasnapshot have a failsafe boot option and some have a no-probe and a no-modeset option. The failsafe is the same as the no-probe with nomodeset added to it. I did that to eliminate a boot entry without eliminating the option in that entry. Feel free to experiment with the list of  "no*" options in those boot entries. You might only need one or two of them. At the boot menu, TAB gets you to the boot command where you can edit it.

Gary:
Install all four packages (or just the -base packages). If you install the -gui packages, you also need yad, which is not in jessie repos.
You can get that at http://distro.ibiblio.org/refracta/file … _packages/ (either version will work in jessie. The later version will work in ascii.)

apt-cache search refracta
refractainstaller-base - tool to install a running live-CD to hard drive.
refractainstaller-gui - tool to install a running live-CD to hard drive.
refractasnapshot-base - tool to create a live-CD from the running system
refractasnapshot-gui - tool to create a live-CD from the running system

Gus:
If you comment out all but experimental, you won't get any dependencies.

If your root partition is encrypted, you need a separate /boot partition. It has nothing to do with the number or type of operating systems on the computer. It does not have to be the first partition, but I think that's where it usually goes. And since you're using gpt, there's no need for logical partitions unless you're using lvm. You can have more than four primary partitions.

You didn't ask about this, but I'll mention that the /boot partition does not need to be flagged as bootable.

I will also mention that if you were using uefi instead of legacy bios, you would need an efi partition, which would be flagged as bootable and would not be the same thing as a separate /boot partition. You can have both of those. The efi partition (fat32 with flags 'boot,esp') would be required, and the /boot partition is optional.

It might be worth comparing the kernel configs between devuan and either bunsen or system rescue. Maybe those kernels have something compiled in that devuan doesn't have. Look at /boot/config-<version>. It might be possible to install devuan and then use another kernel that works properly with your system. (maybe a liquorix kernel) In that case, you could install ascii from the live iso (with acpi=off) and then replace the kernel.

You can install jessie on it from an installer CD and it boots ok after that? If you do a small install (no desktop, just standard system utilities) then upgrading to ascii should be pretty easy. But you need to have a network connection. You might just need the backports kernel and firmware-iwlwifi. That could be done by downloading packages and installing off-line.

There are some installation guides here - https://devuan.org/os/documentation/dev1fanboy/

There will be live isos and regular installer isos for ascii. Sometime soon, I hope.

Edit: some interesting results on search for 'kernel watchdog bug soft lockup xorg'

There's a problem with the installer's rsync excludes list when you use it in ascii. Add the following lines to /usr/lib/refractainstaller/installer_exclude.list so you don't end up copying the live system twice. I just saw this in a vbox install - the rsync output did not look right - a lot of usr/lib/live/mount was scrolling by.

# Added for symlink /lib
- /usr/lib/live/overlay
- /usr/lib/live/image
- /usr/lib/live/rootfs
- /usr/lib/live/mount

Oh, broadcom-sta-source depends on debhelper, which is not installed. Hm..

fungus, There's no display manager. Use 'startx'. Make sure you don't still have a copy of /etc/profile.d/zz-live-config_xinit.sh in the installed system. If you're still having problems after a reinstall, please start your own thread.

The second post in this thread suggests trying some different boot options with msi laptops.
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2313838

Try the no-probe or failsafe option in the boot menu or some combination of the options listed there. You can see the boot command by pressing the TAB key (for isolinux, booting bios) or 'e' (for grub, booting uefi). 

Or try adding 'single' to the boot command and see if you can boot to single-user mode.

The last message is from xorg. The xorg in the iso is just the jessie version. It's not from backports. If you feel like experimenting, there's a live iso made from ascii that has newer xorg. It also has openrc and eudev. Wireless firmware is not installed, but the packages are there to be installed without a network.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/refracta/file … 3_2222.iso
(note: logins and passwords are different on this iso: root/root and user/user)

For the record - this is on a refracta-jessie that was upgraded to ascii. So I started with xfce. It also has icewm and openbox, and I use lxpanel and lxterminal with ob. But I don't have the full lxde destkop. I've also had other weird stuff with this installation. Today I had to add net.ifnames=0 to the boot command a couple of times to have network connection. Normally I don't need to do that with this install, even though it's using 4.9 kernel.

Tested another install on the same machine. This one started as a minimal install, upgraded to ascii, then added apps. In xfce and openbox, gparted won't start from the menu, but if I start gparted-pkexec in terminal, it asks for password. This install also has lxqt, and there, I get a graphical window asking for the root password like it should. (lxqt-policykit-agent runs)

I seem to be the only one with this problem (the one in the subject line) so I won't file a bug report on it. At some point I'll do another refracta jessie to ascii upgrade and watch what happens. The current one has been through a lot to get where it is.

fungus, look at what got updated in ceres that did not get updated in ascii. That should narrow it down.  Look at /var/log/apt/history.log or see what the newest packages are in /var/cache/apt/archives.

nathg,

Thanks for the reminder. I tried replacing mate-polkit with policykit-1-gnome and I get the same behavior. (gparted runs without password).

I tried running without a display manager, and I'm getting inconsistent results. Sometimes I can break it so gparted doesn't run (in terminal it gives me an error message about trying to run it as another user and I don't have permission) and sometimes it does run. And sometimes I end up with no input in console and have to use sysrq keys to reboot.

So far, I have not found the right combination to cause pkexec to ask me for a password. At least not today. I have been asked for a password in terminal a couple days ago.

Unprivileged users should be able to search package names and descriptions. They should not be allowed to install software or resize partitions (as I just did). That's a security risk.

I found this bug report, concerning the problem that most people are having. It's not very helpful.
pkexec: Synpatic & gParted fails to authenicate
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=780275

And this one about the relationship between pkexec and sudo, also not very helpful. My user is not in the sudo group. User did have sudo privs for shutdown, reboot, suspend and hibernate. I removed those privs and the problem with gparted persists.
policykit-1: members of group sudo become root with pkexec while ignoring /etc/sudoers
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=869922

Here's my polkit file for gparted:

# cat /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/com.ubuntu.pkexec.gparted.policy 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE policyconfig PUBLIC
 "-//freedesktop//DTD PolicyKit Policy Configuration 1.0//EN"
 "http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/PolicyKit/1/policyconfig.dtd">
<policyconfig>

  <action id="com.ubuntu.pkexec.gparted">
    <message>Authentication is required to run the GParted Partition Editor</message>
    <icon_name>gparted</icon_name>
    <defaults>
      <allow_any>auth_admin</allow_any>
      <allow_inactive>auth_admin</allow_inactive>
      <allow_active>auth_admin</allow_active>
    </defaults>
    <annotate key="org.freedesktop.policykit.exec.path">/usr/sbin/gparted</annotate>
    <annotate key="org.freedesktop.policykit.exec.allow_gui">true</annotate>
  </action>

</policyconfig>

Here's what /var/log/auth.log has to say when I open gparted from the menu:

Aug 17 19:35:45 refracta-ascii pkexec[5206]: pam_unix(polkit-1:session): session opened for user root by (uid=1000)
Aug 17 19:35:45 refracta-ascii pkexec[5206]: user: Executing command [USER=root] [TTY=unknown] [CWD=/home/user] [COMMAND=/usr/sbin/gparted]