If you are installing from the minimal-live, there will already be at least one ext2/3/4 filesystem on the virtual disk when you get to the grub-install stage.  What do fdisk and blkid show for the disk? What virtualization software are you using on the mac? Maybe it does something differently from what I expect.

There's no specific iso for macs, but the amd64 desktop-live has both the 32 and 64-bit bootloaders and is know to work on at least one old macbook pro. If you do in fact need the 32-bit bootloader, you will need to install the grub-efi-ia32 package in the live environment before you install the system. You can install it with apt if you have network, or you can install it with

dpkg -i /grub-efi-ia32*.deb

When you install the package, don't let it install the bootloader at that time. The live installer (Refracta Installer) will let you choose the efi partition if there are two or more.

Make sure you check if that's what you need with

cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size

before you try the 32-bit bootloader.

I'm not sure that will be enough. You still need a way to make the machine boot from the usb drive. Google says hold down the option key at boot and then select the usb drive.

A netinstall from a 3.0 iso would give you 3.1 or actually a little newer than that since some packages have been upgraded since last week. Volume settings on my up-to-date mate don't get lost. I do keep losing the hardware setting. Analog Stereo Output keeps reverting to Analog Stereo Duplex.

I tried running 'alsactl store' before rebooting and 'alsactl restore' after reboot. It didn't save the hardware setting.

The desktop-live isos already have firmware-amd-graphics installed. Maybe the version from backports is needed. I don't have an easy way to test that right now. And debian wiki suggests that this is not the problem. (4.19 is new enough)

Missing from beomint:
https://paste.debian.net/1192135/

Missing from debbowulf:
https://paste.debian.net/1192136/

The one that looked obvious was debian-mate-default-settings, which is missing in the system that does save its settings. So I tried removing that from my mate. The result was no panel and no righ-click menu on the desktop.

I also tried installing and running dconf-editor to see if there was something about audio settings in it. There is. Toggling "use default mixer device" did not fix it.

I don't know what to try next. Do you know where mate saves its settings?

uh-oh...

I haven't been paying close attention to this thread.

live-config messes with anacron via the live-config script, /lib/live/config/1110-anacron which uses dpkg-divert to disable anacron. This is useful in a live-CD where everything is read-only.
This only activates when you boot into a live system, not an installed system.

Refractainstaller copies the RUNNING live system to hard drive.

You just uncovered a 10-year-old bug that I didn't know about. The installer needs to undo this during the installation.

I suspect that the right way to undo it is to use dpkg-divert.

# ls -l /usr/sbin/anacron*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     9 Apr  2  2018 /usr/sbin/anacron -> /bin/true
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 38928 Feb  6 14:18 /usr/sbin/anacron.orig.anacron

# dpkg-divert --remove /usr/sbin/anacron
dpkg-divert: warning: please specify --no-rename explicitly, the default will change to --rename in 1.20.x
Removing 'diversion of /usr/sbin/anacron to /usr/sbin/anacron.orig.anacron by live-config'

And then to verify that it really did what it was supposed to do (but did not):

# ls -l /usr/sbin/anacron*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     9 Apr  2  2018 /usr/sbin/anacron -> /bin/true
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 38928 Feb  6 14:18 /usr/sbin/anacron.orig.anacron

Yet dpkg-divert thinks it did the right thing:

# dpkg-divert --remove /usr/sbin/anacron
dpkg-divert: warning: please specify --no-rename explicitly, the default will change to --rename in 1.20.x
No diversion 'any diversion of /usr/sbin/anacron', none removed.

Computer, do as I say!

# mv /usr/sbin/anacron.orig.anacron /usr/sbin/anacron
# ls -l /usr/sbin/anacron*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 38928 Feb  6 14:18 /usr/sbin/anacron
root@nomad:/home/phred# 

I'll reboot and see what happens.

Update: I see this in syslog for the first time after reboot. I think it's working now.

Apr  1 15:44:42 localhost anacron[1828]: Will run job `cron.daily' in 5 min.
Apr  1 15:44:42 localhost anacron[1828]: Will run job `cron.weekly' in 10 min.
Apr  1 15:44:42 localhost anacron[1828]: Will run job `cron.monthly' in 15 min.

If you have one of each of these systems, you could compare package lists. Or make two package lists and paste them somewhere like paste.debian.net and I will compare them.

dpkg -l | awk '/^ii/ { print $2 " " $3 }' > package_list

Here's the final version (I think). Tested in xfce (thunar) and mate (caja), both in chimaera. I'll rebuild the package later today.

.rubberband,
.view .rubberband,
view rubberband,
rubberband {
	background-color: alpha (@theme_selected_bg_color, 0.35);
	border-color: @theme_selected_bg_color;
	border-style: solid;
	border-width: 1px;
	border-radius: 2px;
}

On my T420 running chimaera, I get the same message about iwl-debug-yoyo.bin, but there's no boot delay. I don't have any error messages about regulatory.db. That loads ok.

I don't know where to go with this. Just thought I'd add some data points.

Here's deepsea-icon-theme. It's in ceres now and will move down to chimaera next week.

deb package is here:
https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/devuan/poo … .0_all.deb

set root=(hd0)   # might be hd1 or hd2
linux /boot/isolinux/linux
initrd /boot/isolinux/initrd.gz
boot

But you will be booting and installing in uefi mode. Legacy boot will give you an isolinux boot menu instead of a grub boot menu. Is there a way to force a legacy boot?

I'm using runit-init in chimaera. The getties, acpid and ssh were all set up automatically.  I set up others using advice from this thread.

sendkey ctrl-alt-f2 worked. Thanks!

Also forgot to meniton - if you make a new runlevel and decide to change its name, don't change it while you are in that runlevel, and pay attention to the symlinks in /etc/runit/runsvdir. My system was unbootable because of a dead symlink for default that pointed to the old name.