I read through this thread quickly and may have missed something, but it sounds like you're trying to make changes in a running live session. Or maybe you're surgically modifying the iso file and then booting the result. Those ways sound difficult to me. Easier is to install devuan into a spare partition or into a virtual machine, configure it the way you want, and then run refractasnapshot.

To boot the live isos without autologin, add the word noautologin to the boot command.

To boot the live isos without sudo, add nocomponents=sudo to the boot command.

Read man live-config for more.

I was wrong. That package is gone and consolekit was rebuilt without the dep on libcgmanager0.

If you refuse aptitude's first suggestion, it should give you other possible solutions.

Edit: if that doesn't work, whatever is wrong will get fixed tomorrow or so.

I guess I'm not understanding what you're saying here. It is possible to run sysvinit without dbus. This is in a daedalus live-iso made last May.

user@refracta-nodbus:~$ pgrep -a dbus
user@refracta-nodbus:~$ 
user@refracta-nodbus:~$ dpkg -l |grep sysvinit
ii  live-config-sysvinit             11.0.3+devuan2                         all          Live System Configuration Components (sysvinit backend)
ii  sysvinit-core                    3.03-1devuan1                          amd64        System-V-like init
ii  sysvinit-utils                   3.03-1devuan1                          amd64        System-V-like utilities

deepforest, I would like to see the installation log (refractainstaller.log) that should be in the user's home directory. You can post it here or paste.debian.net or email it to me through the forum. Thanks.

Camtaf's diagnosis is probably correct. I've sometimes seen remnant /target_home and /target_boot directories that didn't get cleaned up correctly, but they are just mountpoints and are always empty on reboot.

Also, that first option in the live installer, "Create new, separate /home partition" is not the same thing as "Re-use an existing /home partition that already has files on it." That latter option doesn't exist. If you want to re-use an existing home, just let the installer put /home in the root partition and edit your fstab afterward. I recommend keeping the user configs from the live install in case you need to use them. Just rename /home to /home.live or something like that.

Fluxbox-1.4 is not in sid/ceres yet, so I guess you'd have to compile it yourself. That might be easy or not. I don't know. It may not make it into sid in time for bookworm/daedalus.

If I use lxrandr in xfce to change the resolution as described in my previous post, it does not cause the problem with firefox. It only happens in fluxbox.

I just tested this, and yes, there's a delay on reboot if the nfs server goes down while the share is mounted. The delay was less than 10 seconds on an old thinkpad with an i5 cpu. To avoid the delay before attempting reboot, you can unmount the share with

umount -l <nfs-share-mountpoint>

There might be a way to shorten the timeout on the delay, but I don't know where that would be.

I don't understand what problem you are having or what you are asking for. If you want the previous version of refracasnapshot or any older version, they are here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/refracta/files/tools

What version of gnuinos/devuan are you using and how did you prepare the usb stick?

https://sourceforge.net/projects/refracta/files/tools/
I just uploaded fixed live-boot deb packages I made for myself in October. These have a newer version number than what's in the repo, so they will replace the broken live-boot packages. I used these to make the daedalus live test isos.

Several years ago I discovered that the software that cycles through the USB ports looking for the non-free device drivers on a usb stick, only looks at USB-a and USB-b ports.  It does not look beyond this to, say, USB-c (where I initially had the usb stick plugged in)...  the code simply cycles back around and ask that a usb drive be inserted with the firmware on it

What software are you using that asks you to insert a usb with firmware? The only thing I know that asks that is the debian/devuan installer that's on the installer isos, not in the devuan live isos or any Refracta isos. That question comes up early in the installer and should usually be ignored. In most cases, the firmware will be installed automatically unless you do an expert install and tell it not to use non-free software. The main exceptions to this are certain broadcom devices that require an internet connection to get the wireless firmware - that poses a serious problem if someone is trying to install and doesn't have an ethernet connection.

If my guess is right, and you're talking about that early question in the debian/devuan installer, then I think the code is probably in the udeb package that asks for the firmware. I don't know that installer well enough to know which udeb that is.

Refracta xfce isos and the no-X isos do not have non-free firmware installed. There are firmware packages in the user's home directory that you can install with dpkg if you don't have a network connection. dpkg -i /home/user/firmware-iwlwifi*.deb

If you do have a network connection, you can add 'contrib' and 'non-free' to the deb lines in /etc/apt/sources.list then run apt update and apt install firmware-iwlwifi.