The failsafe option in the boot menu has these:

noapic noapm nodma nomce nolapic nosmp nomodeset vga=normal

And I noticed that in the grub menu created by live-sdk, the failsafe entry is missing 'nomodeset'. It's only in the syslinux menu. In refractasnapshot, 'nomodeset' is in the failsafe entries in both menus.

failsafe is just a name for a choice in the boot menu. Look at the boot command for that choice and you will see some kernel paramaters. One of them is 'nomodeset' which is sometimes useful when normal boot options result in a black screen.

What video cards are you using? I don't think you mentioned that.

Ok, I'm curious to know if the excalibur-nonfree iso that I linked above works.

You could build an iso using live-sdk, but for a one-off, it's easier to install what you want in a VM and then run refractasnapshot to make the live iso. With live-sdk, if you list a package to be installed that doesn't exist, then the build fails and you have to start over again. If you're working in a VM and planning to use refractasnapshot, if you try to install a package that doesn't exist, that one apt command fails, and you still have whatever work you've done building up the system.

Here are instructions for live-sdk:
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=551

Here are instructions for refractasnapshot:
https://git.devuan.org/devuan/refractas … apshot.txt

Some more detail about exactly what you tried with which iso would help. Also, if you can find any of these other relevant discussions that you mentioned and provide the links, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm doing 15 different things and couldn't find them.

I have no trouble booting the isos in qemu or virtualbox in bios mode, but I have mixed results booting them in uefi mode. I don't know the reason for that. Gathering all the evidence in once place would be a good start.

For example, this works:

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 devuan_excalibur_6.1.1_amd64_desktop-live.iso

But trying to boot that iso in qemu uefi fails.

Meanwhile, this one works in uefi even though it was made the same way as the excalibur iso.

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd devuan_freia_7-preview-2026-01-12_amd64_desktop-live.iso

And this one works (excalibur):

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd refracta-isos/13.2/refracta_13.2_xfce_amd64-20251205_1133.iso

Edit: This one that I made for a wifi test yesterday works in uefi, too. It's just the default devuan excalibur desktop install that was created with refractasnapshot instead of live-sdk. The uefi part of the build is the same for both methods, so I'm at a loss for an explanation.

https://get.refracta.org/files/experimental/excalibur_nonfree-20260224_2014.iso

Please try this and let me know if it works. There's a gpg sig file in the same directory.

https://get.refracta.org/files/experime … 4_2014.iso

sha256sum:

31c2849c144cf99b742cce27e1781baa2d6df935f0b3bd86bee14e7545008a59  excalibur_nonfree-20260224_2014.iso

sources.list will still be used if you don't "modernize" the sources when apt asks you. It will also be used if you change your mind and move the modernized files out of the way and replace your sources.list file.

Devarch, you are mistaken. I did not remove support for FDE. You have to check a box (in the gui version) or say 'yes' (in the cli version) to encrypt the root partition. If /boot is in that partition, the installer will add the appropriate line to /etc/default/grub.

You might look at the Help in the installer or the readme in /usr/share/doc/refractainstaller-base. You only need to read four short lines to get to the answer.

STARTING REFRACTA INSTALLER  (9.5.x)

*** NEW in 9.4 ***

- UEFI and BIOS installers have been merged (both gui and cli scripts)

- Installer supports gpt disk with bios boot. (special partition needed)

- Installer supports full-disk encryption (no separate /boot partition)

Note: If you want to get into playing with chroot and doing some manual tasks, you can use the cli installer to do lvm or raid installs, which aren't overtly supported in refractainstaller.

Note2: If you want to tell me that it's not proper to have /boot inside the root partition, you'll need to explain why.  The reason for having it outside the encrypted partition all these years was so the bootloader could find the kernel. Well, now grub can find it in an encrypted partition.

grub-pc-bin was there. I normally include that and even the ia32-bin package, just in case someone needs it. (old macbook pro)

FYI, refractainstaller had FDE before debian-installer did.

In my last build, I copied all of the user's home to /etc/skel and uncommented the appropriate line in the modules. It worked - it kept all the user configs and changed the user name.

And no, I didn't run the scripts. I'll have to try a no-network install to see what happens.

Installs and works on excalibur. That's a sight for sore eyes. It's like seeing an old friend I'd forgotten about.

As mentioned in IRC, there's an extra entry in the apps menu. Other annoyance is that it disconnects the wired interface when you connect to wireless. I don't remember if the old wicd did that. N-M lets me have both interfaces up at the same time.

Added test for amd64 vs. arm64 to create efi boot files for arm. Please test and report.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/refrac … 64_all.deb

I don't see it on your list, but I do find it with # apt -t excalibur-backports search linux-image-

That should pull in new kernels from backports if they show up. I don't think they get patched as fast as the main kernels, but I could be wrong about that.