The reason I set ASCII as the default release was because I am using an MX Linux repo for their adobe-flashplugin package.

Contents of /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx-17.list:

# MX Community Main and Test Repos

deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ stretch non-free #main

#deb http://la.mxrepo.com/mx/testrepo/ stretch test

However, with the MX-17 repo enabled, APT tries to pull in other packages:

$ aptitude upgrade -s
The following packages will be upgraded: 
  intel-microcode unrar 
2 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,557 kB of archives. After unpacking 9,216 B will be used.

Note: Using 'Simulate' mode.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

If I lower the priority of the MX-17 repo to 400, will that solve this problem? If so, how do I do that?

Thanks for the reply. Here's that info:

$ apt policy libssl1.0.2
libssl1.0.2:
  Installed: 1.0.2q-1~deb9u1
  Candidate: 1.0.2q-1~deb9u1
  Version table:
     1.0.2r-1~deb9u1 500
        500 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security/main i386 Packages
 *** 1.0.2q-1~deb9u1 990
        990 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

That's an interesting (but puzzling) result.

I created a new Firefox profile to see if that would help, but it did not. I also have Devuan ASCII (64-bit) in a VM, and I tried the same test with that system. No problem there.

The Devuan ASCII system with the problem, the one that I am using right now, started out as Debian Squeeze, so it's an old system that (likely) has a considerable amount of cruft. Since I am planning to reinstall the system some time next year, I now consider this problem as solved. Thank you all for your help.

Phil

P.S. I unchecked "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above", and the problem is now gone.

If anyone wants to test this, visit this web page:
Tamiflu Prices and Tamiflu Coupons - GoodRx

Click on one of the green buttons that read "GET FREE COUPON". After the page with the coupon loads, print the page to a PDF file.

Phil

Have you looked at Window Maker (wmaker)?

Why don't you connect a DVD drive via USB? You won't need to boot from it since you'd only be pulling packages from the DVD(s). And, yes, it can be done because that's what I used to do for an old laptop that wouldn't reliably boot from a DVD, even though it had a DVD-ROM drive. With this solution, installing the additional packages from the DVD(s) would need to be done post-installation.

Here's the command you would need to make this work:

# apt-cdrom -d <path-to-the-USB-DVD-drive>

After installation and set-up is complete, you would need to edit sources.list to remove the reference(s) to the DVD(s).

Phil

Thank you for the suggestion. Yes, I did, and the problem remains.

Phil

I thought I should post a follow-up to my previous message to explain my situation a little better. Back in 2017 I created a customized live CD based on Debian Jessie, but without systemd. While testing my live CD, I discovered that the "Restart" and "Shut Down" buttons in Xfce were not working properly. Since I built my live CD with "Recommends" (recommended packages) disabled, I figured that I must be missing some semi-important package(s). After a little research, I guessed that installing policykit-1 might fix the problem, and I was right.

To reiterate, this solution worked for me:

# aptitude update
# aptitude install policykit-1

That's it!

That systemd-free Debian Jessie was installed in a VM, and later on it was dist-upgraded to Devuan ASCII. The upgrade went smoothly, and afterward LightDM continued to work normally. I don't know what the best solution to this problem is, but I thought I should chime in with my experience in case the information is helpful to someone.

Phil

Hi devuser,

Thank you for your efforts to try to determine possible causes for this error. Your reply prompted me to think more intensively about other possible causes for the error message, so it was definitely helpful.

I found the culprit: VirtualBox. I recently upgraded a Debian Stretch VM to Devuan ASCII. I created the new sources.list on the host system, and copied it to the guest via a shared directory. That's how the permissions got changed. Oddly enough, when I copied a test file from the guest to the host, via the same shared directory, the permissions were not changed. From now on, I'll have to remember to tar or zip files before copying them to guest systems.

Phil

This information may be helpful: HOWTO: JWM Basic Configuration

Phil

For me, apt-cacher-ng was flakey, and one of the features simply didn't work. When I was doing some research on the matter I found comments by others who had similar experiences with apt-cacher-ng. That research also led me to squid-deb-proxy, which I decided to try. After I figured out how to configure it, it has been working without problems. I did have a problem with it once, but it was probably my fault -- I installed it on a fresh system and it refused to start up using the old cache. After I deleted the old cache and let it create a new one, everything was fine.

Also, getting live-build to work with squid-deb-proxy was simple.

From my /etc/live/build.conf file:

# The line below is for squid-deb-proxy.
LB_APT_HTTP_PROXY="http://localhost:8000/"
LB_MIRROR_BOOTSTRAP="http://packages.devuan.org/merged"
LB_MIRROR_CHROOT_SECURITY="http://packages.devuan.org/merged"
LB_MIRROR_BINARY="http://packages.devuan.org/merged"
LB_MIRROR_BINARY_SECURITY="http://packages.devuan.org/merged"

Phil

Hi David,

Instead of an antivirus, considering using these things instead: AppArmor, FireHOL, Firejail, and NoScript or uBlock Origin.

Phil