boot.log is like over 1800 loc. I have no idea how to extract it or even if it would be useful. I do know that around 1 month ago the snapshots i was creating were ok and would load into the live session.

I dont understand it so i cant really be much help im sorry.

@ ralph, so the raw/file is like booting a hard disk as apposed to just giving it the cdrom flag to boot the iso?
either way both just go to initramfs. Im not a qemu user or a virtual disk user for that matter so will rtfm.

I can confirm i am having the same issue as computer bob, it seems something has gone wrong due to an update with either refractasnapshot or the tools used with it ? I get the exact same messages computer bob posted.

I copy to disk using dd this way.

# dd if=snapshot.iso of=/dev/sdb status=progress oflag=sync bs=4M

It gets to the live usb refracta menu but fails to boot and goes to fallback initramfs. So my guess is maybe something has changed in live-boot-initramfs-tools ?

I created a thread on this recently. I would recommend learning to use the program fsarchiver. https://www.fsarchiver.org/

Here is the thread.
http://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=4173

There is also refractasnapshot and refractainstaller, which are nice tools for creating an iso snapshot you can then use refractainstaller to reinstall the system with most if not all settings and customization's persistent. Both of these are maintained by fsmithred i believe and are in the devuan repos.

Ok i gave this a try and can confirm it works with a bit of editing.

I installed a fresh minimal netinstall of beowulf using expert install so i could leave out contrib, non-free and deb-src repos.

my /etc/apt/sources.list look like below.

deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf main
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf-security main
deb http://deb.devuan.org/devuan beowulf-proposed-updates main

# LMDE - Linux Mint Devuan Edition
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com debbie main upstream import backport

added key apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-keys A6616109451BBBF2

I then pin systemd in /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosystemd , just in case.

Package: systemd
Pin: release n=beowulf
Pin-Priority: -1

Package: systemd
Pin: release n=debbie 
Pin-Priority: -1

I then created a release preference to debbie in /etc/apt/preferences.d/99lmde ( i hope this is the correct way?)

Package: *
Pin: release a=debbie
Pin-Priority: 900

I then apt update and dist-upgrade then installed mint-meta-cinnamon, xorg, xorg video drivers, lightdm. As suspected lmde repos pulled in the non free iwilwifi firmware i needed.

I dont know much about linux mint but it did not install a login manager so installed lightdm?

nixer, mint-meta-cinnamon did not seem to add /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories, not yet anyway and the update manager says im all up to date.

I did notice this in /etc/apt/preferences.d/official-extra-repositories.pref should i keep this as is ?

Package: *
Pin: origin "build.linuxmint.com"
Pin-Priority: 700

edit: scrot or it didnt happen.

You should try out a minimal devuan netinstall.

You would need to install xorg, xserver-xorg-video and input packages, then your openbox/fluxbox wm, get those few working first and then build up from there.

The way to do this is to only select standard system utils when it comes to installing the desktop and other software, maybe include cups printing, ssh server and console productivity if you need these.

edit: some typos.

Thanks nixer. Its good that you mentioned the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories issue. I will probably give this a try on a spare bare metal partition on a test rig. How do you find it as in how do you rate it, is it a good user experience? I read the mint repos have some interesting software.

thanks for the contributions all.

@ just, that sounds like a good idea per computer. The portable drive in my case is a nice option for having both storage media and backup media on the same disk. I can use the portable drive for many other computers if need be as long as i have the correct firmware and drivers installed. At the moment installed devuan to portable ssd drives is good, there is no lag like you would get from a spin drive and the speed of usb3 ports is good for this type of application. Technology has come far in this regard.

^ i had a similar issue when i shredded and zeroed a drive not too long ago and added voidlinux musl-libc.

It must have been a good wipe because upon installation void couldnt pick up the hardware clock or tzdata even though i had set it in the settings during install. Not sure if that is a bug or not. The clock was reset to factory defaults so 2016, nothing would work in regards to updates or using a web browser.

The answer for me was to..

# date -s "Mar 5 2021 23:33:00"

then

# hwclock --systohc

Ah i missed wl driver section. Good to know anyhow thanks head on a stick. https://wiki.debian.org/wl#supported

so pootler have the speeds gone back to normal?

I get that but imo you need to learn from mistakes and most issues can be resolved with attention to detail and some research. Reinstalling in your case is seriously not needed, the only time i would reinstall would be when i have deleted by accident a directory or file that is system dependent that i dont have a backup for.