Guess I should have re-read this thread before uploading new isos. These are beowulf.

https://get.refracta.org/files/experimental/

No dbus (just some libs), no *kits, no libsystemd0, most of the same apps that go into the xfce builds.
You can probably get rid of most of the dbus libs if you remove abiword and transmission.
You can replace xpdf with atril. (Not sure if that'll pull in dbus libs again, but it won't pull in dbus. I left it out to keep the iso size down.)

Made with live-sdk. I'll post the blend files when I decide where to put them.

It looks like you were able to do an upgrade in devuan while running systemd. Is that correct? Did apt complain? Or did you install sysvinit first?

1+

Thanks for testing and for the nice write-up. It looks pretty easy. I've tried a few upgrades from ascii to beowulf, and those were easy.

To free up the memory that mate is using, drop to console (ctrl-alt-F2) log in as root and stop your display manager.
/etc/init.d/slim stop Or replace slim in that command with lightdm or whatever dm you're using. Replace stop with start in that command when you're ready to go back to the desktop.

To read all about booting uefi:
https://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html

Look around in your bios for a Legacy or CSM boot setting. It's also possible that the boot device menu gives you a choice of legacy or uefi. You can usually get to this menu by pressing some key at boot (at the motherboard/computer logo) maybe F12, F11, F8, ESC, or other. Pressing DEL usually gets you to the bios.

Refracta 9.1 (13 Apr 2019)
https://get.refracta.org/files/stable/

Atril added 124mb. I give up on the 700mb limit.
It still fits on a 1gb usb stick!

The DNG message that golinux linked earlier in this thread is gone. I think I know what it pointed to - there was a patch submitted by Didier Kryn for /etc/init.d/networking that fixes the problem. I have the patch, and I have the message in my mail. Both are copied below.

I don't know if the line numbers in the patch are still correct, but I do know that it works in ascii. I've applied it manually.

check-link-state.patch

--- networking~	2016-09-16 15:02:20.000000000 +0200
+++ networking	2017-12-18 17:25:49.902781233 +0100
@@ -112,7 +112,12 @@ ifup_hotplug () {
 			    done)
 	    if [ -n "$ifaces" ]
 	    then
-		ifup $ifaces "$@" || true
+		# link detection does not work unless we up the link
+		ip link set "$iface" up || true
+		if [ "$(cat /sys/class/net/$link/operstate)" = up ]
+		then
+		    echo "$iface"
+		fi
 	    fi
     fi
 }

Try this link instead:
https://www.youtube.com/dyneorg/live

They didn't give us any name tags. We're being forced to talk to each other and remember names. Maybe the video with the introductions will be posted today. The 40-minute video for day zero that's there now only shows some of the unstructured time and is pretty much useless. (That unstructured time was not useless for those of us here - we're all getting to know each other just as it was intended.)

Having a great time. Will be back home in a few days.
fsr

I guess it's about as safe as it ever was to use outside repos in debian. As long as they don't require systemd, it should be ok. You might run into problems if something expects to see debian and doesn't recognize devuan. Check forum and mailing list archives for discussions about specific apps.

For the record: If you install from one of the live isos, you would choose to encrypt the root filesystem and not select a separate partition for /boot. That's all. The installer will add the line to /etc/default/grub.

I'm pretty sure I tried refractasnapshot and installer in heads some time ago. I think it works if you add the live-config packages. Newest version of the installer is 9.5.3 and it's in ascii, beowulf and ceres. You don't need to change sources.list for that. Just update the package cache and install what you want.

Either install one of the unsigned kernels (e.g. linux-image-4.19.0-2-amd64-unsigned) or change the name of the bootloader directory from EFI/devuan to EFI/debian.

Standard methods for persistence won't work with Heads because live-config is not installed. There might be another way to do it, but I don't know how. You could make your own heads iso with live-sdk and add live-config and live-config-sysvinit to the package lists. (I haven't tested that but it should work.)

Keep in mind that full-persistence can reduce security. The read-only system is always clean when you boot up - every boot is the first time. If you just want to be able to save files, create another partition and mount it somewhere in your home.

Something must have changed recently. I have an ascii install that has ascii-backports, beowulf and ceres all pinned to 100, and yesterday I noticed that apt-cache policy was telling me that ceres had the Candidate version.

I just changed those pin priorities to 99 and checked again. Now backports has the candidate, and the backports priority shows as 100 even when I've got it set to 99 in my preferences.

It should be showing me the ascii version as the candidate.

Pin-Priority: 100 (on ascii-backports, beowulf and ceres)

user@ascii:~$ apt-cache policy debootstrap
debootstrap:
  Installed: 1.0.89+devuan2
  Candidate: 1.0.114+devuan1
  Version table:
     1.0.114+devuan1 100
        100 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ceres/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110+devuan1 100
        100 http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110~bpo9+1 100
        100 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-backports/main amd64 Packages
 *** 1.0.89+devuan2 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.0.89-devuan2.1 500
        500 http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii/main amd64 Packages

Pin-Priority: 99 (on ascii-backports, beowulf and ceres)

user@ascii:~$ apt-cache policy debootstrap
debootstrap:
  Installed: 1.0.89+devuan2
  Candidate: 1.0.110~bpo9+1
  Version table:
     1.0.114+devuan1 99
         99 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ceres/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110+devuan1 99
         99 http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110~bpo9+1 100
        100 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-backports/main amd64 Packages
 *** 1.0.89+devuan2 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.0.89-devuan2.1 500
        500 http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii/main amd64 Packages

Pin-Priority: 50 (on ascii-backports, beowulf and ceres)

user@ascii:~$ apt-cache policy debootstrap
debootstrap:
  Installed: 1.0.89+devuan2
  Candidate: 1.0.110~bpo9+1
  Version table:
     1.0.114+devuan1 50
         50 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ceres/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110+devuan1 50
         50 http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf/main amd64 Packages
     1.0.110~bpo9+1 100
        100 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-backports/main amd64 Packages
 *** 1.0.89+devuan2 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.0.89-devuan2.1 500
        500 http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii/main amd64 Packages