I didn't mean to insult you.

When it comes to my computer, I distrust ANYONE who hasn't already earned my trust over time.

Also, I run a web site that has had 22 million visits from all over the world. I study its server logs every day. In all these years, I can't even remember the last time my site received a visitor from Russia (you have since changed your location to USSR) that wasn't malicious and needed to be blocked. So, I am especially suspicious of security advice from anyone who is from Russia.

Sorry, my feelings are based on my own experience, and are not personal against you.

Those "lock file" messages appear to me to be saying that you're running your commands as a normal user, not as root. Since you're using sudo, my guess is that something is wrong with -- or has changed --- in your sudo configuration.

Even if I weren't convinced of Devuan's technical superiority to the very similar, but now-systemd-dependent distro that I used for years,

I still remember the first time I installed an booted up Devuan Ascii, several years ago. I was almost immediately struck by:

• Devuan's ease of setup, configuration, and use

• How much Devuan reminded me of a much-older, easier (for me to configure) version of my  previously used distro, BEFORE IT ADDED SYSTEMD.

During the years that I've been here, I've also been VERY impressed with Devuan's knowlegable, helpful, patient (not sarcastic) community, as demonstrated in this 110-post thread in which MY OWN STUPIDITY caused me to open and then keep the thread going to successful completion, AND this 2-post thread, in which I thanked everyone for their patient help, and apologized for having been so stupid.

I've used Linux full-time since 1996 (CORRECTION: IT WAS 2006), but I've personally never experienced that incredible combination of knowledge, skill, patience, and true helpfulness that I've seen AND EXPERIENCED here.

To me, not only is Devuan the best software, but, also, its community is as good as its software, and that's really important to me.

I learned to understand about 1/4 of what you learned today. 

I now realize that this entire problem and LONG, LONG thread was MY FAULT.

My mistake (and your kindness) resulted in all of you spending HOURS and HOURS, trying to help me.

But you were all great! NO ONE ever told me, "Hey, you idiot, none of this would have happened if you had allowed enough work space on your hard drive for the software to work correctly!"

So, THANKS AGAIN, EVERYBODY, FOR YOUR EXPERTISE AND INCREDIBLE PATIENCE WITH ME -- and I'm very, very sorry for causing so much trouble.

I'm still here, as a monkey with a keyboard, if there is anything I can do to help. 

I had ASCII on sda1 (installed from scratch to straight gpt partition - no special secure boot or anything) for the past several years. To make sure that I still remembered how to install Devuan, I installed Beowulf (a brand new simple - not advanced install), and got it all configured, on a separate partition.

Once I was confident that that freshly-installed Beowulf was working great, on the separate partition, I waited  a few days, until  I got enough confidence to "risk" trashing my "perfect" existing ASCII install by doing an upgrade-in-place of it to Beowulf, still on sda1. I was very, very pleased with how quickly that upgrade process went, and how correct its results were.

I think that, earlier in this thread, I said that I had installed Beowulf on sda1 from scratch, but tonight, I remembered that, even though I had done that on a separate partition, the Beowulf that I've been using on sda1 USED TO BE ASCII, and was upgraded to Beowulf, preserving its autologin capability.

I don't know if any of that makes any difference to you, but, in case it does, I thought I'd better make it clear, now that I remember how it all happened.

I'm sorry I didn't remember to figure that out yet. I'm using Xfce, with whatever the default login manager is, but I first set it up years ago, in ASCII, and it was automatically upgraded to work when I finally got up the motivation and courage to upgrade ASCII to Beowulf a few weeks ago.

I promise that I will figure out what I did, and where I did it, to make autologin work.   

IIRC, the whole "squashing" process took several minutes, with virtually no feedback, because the gui feedback progress, back-and-forth bar slowed way, way, down, then stopped altogether, even though (I figured out later) it was actually still "silently" working for several minutes -- while the command-line progress bar only updated two or three times during the whole process. But I'm really glad that they worked, even though, at the time, I suspected that they had locked up.   

YES! I added noautologin to the end of the boot line, and then rebooted!
SUCCESS - except that my data partition didn't get mounted
so that meant that I had no email or browser, UNTIL I eventually figured out how to mount the data partition (/dev/sda6) as /media/data, because that's where my email and browser profiles are stored.
But I got it figured out, as proven by the fact that I'm writing this very first forum response
FROM MY BEOWULF SYSTEM, FULLY CONFIGURED, RUNNING ON MY USB STICK!

I don't know if it's a real word or not, but you have all been patient, knowlegable, understanding, genii (the plural of "genius," in my mind) throughout this entire, lengthy, time-consuming thread.

It has been a REAL HONOR to work with you. Thank you very, very much. You have no idea how much good it did me to help in my own small way.  And I hope that none of you ever have a stroke, and learn, first-hand, how much you've all done for me.

But, please know, in your hearts, from my words, that you've done a tremendous thing for me.

I think there's supposed to be a way to use my WORKING USB stick to INSTALL my system onto a hard drive, but I'm not even going to worry about that right now.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

If you have any unanswered questions, or things for me to test, I'll be happy to keep replying!

Messages received, guys! And some of them actually UNDERSTOOD.

I have printed them out, and will start to work on them, as a to-do list.   

I lost track of what we're doing a few days ago. Right now, I'm just a monkey with a keyboard. 
I'm sure glad that you guys know what you're doing.