I installed from your first zip. I saw the icon and clicked on it, but it just disappeared. Made the changes you suggested and I'm waiting to see that icon again. Anyway, I have a question and a comment.

How/where is 'apt-get update' happening?

This code won't work with a devuan-live (or with most debian-live derivatives):

# Do not run in a LiveCD session
import os.path
import sys
if os.path.exists('/etc/pointlinux-installer/install.conf'):
    print "Can't run in a LiveCD session!"
    sys.exit()

This would probably work better:

# Do not run in a LiveCD session
import os.path
import sys
if os.path.exists('/lib/live/mount/medium'):
    print "Can't run in a LiveCD session!"
    sys.exit()

Note: It will still work in a live session with persistence, because in that case, the path would be '/lib/live/mount/persistence'. If you used '/lib/live/mount' in the code, that would keep it from working in both cases (with or without persistence.)

Welcome to devuan. If you found "no-install-recommends" on your first day, you will do fine here.

I know there's an issue with grub-install in uefi with the signed bootloader. You get EFI/devuan on the efi partition, but the bootloader looks for EFI/debian, and you end up with a grub promp instead of a boot menu. I don't understand what you did when you booted with the installer and fixed it.

The fixes I know about are to either remove grub-efi-amd64-signed and run 'grub-install' and 'update-grub' or else run 'grub-install --bootloader-id=debian' and then 'update-grub'.

When I boot from a virtual hard drive in vbox, it brings me to UEFI Interactive Shell. At the prompt, I type 'exit' and it gives me a menu. I select 'Boot maintenance manager' and then in the next menu select 'Boot from file'. This gives me a directory tree showing the EFI directory. I can drill down until I see grubx64.efi and choose that file. Then it boots. There's no typing involved, but it's still annoying to go through all of that.

When I boot from a uefi-compatible live-iso, it boots correctly.

Sorry I don't have a better answer.

Get package name, version, archive

aptitude search ~i -F"%p# %v# %t#"

If you check just the first box, you should get xfce, because it's the first of the three desktops recommended by task-desktop.

If you check just the xfce box, you'll get task-desktop because xfce depends on it.

So, checking first box only, second box only, or first and second box should all give the same result. (I haven't tested this.)

$ apt-cache depends task-desktop
task-desktop
  Depends: tasksel
  Depends: xorg
  Depends: xserver-xorg-video-all
  Depends: xserver-xorg-input-all
  Depends: desktop-base
 |Recommends: task-xfce-desktop
 |Recommends: task-lxde-desktop
  Recommends: task-mate-desktop
  Recommends: xdg-utils
  Recommends: avahi-daemon
    avahi-daemon:i386
  Recommends: libnss-mdns
  Recommends: anacron
    systemd-cron
  Recommends: eject
    eject:i386
  Recommends: iw
    iw:i386
  Recommends: alsa-utils
    alsa-utils:i386

$ apt-cache depends task-xfce-desktop
task-xfce-desktop
  Depends: tasksel
  Depends: task-desktop
  Depends: xfce4
  Depends: slim
  Recommends: xfce4-goodies
  Recommends: xfce4-power-manager
  Recommends: xfce4-mixer
  Recommends: xfce4-terminal
  Recommends: mousepad
  Recommends: orage
  Recommends: libreoffice-gtk
  Recommends: dbus-x11
    dbus-x11:i386
  Recommends: xsane
    xsane:i386
  Recommends: vlc
  Recommends: quodlibet
 |Recommends: evince-gtk
  Recommends: evince
  Recommends: tango-icon-theme
  Recommends: wicd
  Recommends: synaptic
  Recommends: iceweasel
  Recommends: libreoffice
  Recommends: libreoffice-help-en-us
  Recommends: mythes-en-us
  Recommends: hunspell-en-us
  Recommends: hyphen-en-us
  Recommends: system-config-printer
  Recommends: gnome-orca

I suppose I should quote the translation, in case one of our Spanish-speaking members notices a translation error, and also for the English-speaking members so they don't have to go to the translator just to follow the thread.

Try xcalc. It's part of the x11-apps package and may already be installed.

apt-cache search software lists the following package among others.

$ apt-cache policy software-properties-gtk
software-properties-gtk:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 0.96.20.2-1
  Version table:
     0.96.20.2-1 500
        500 http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii/main amd64 Packages

That's an xfce thing. Other desktops have their own management tools.

/etc/shadow- and /etc/gshadow- are backup files that get created when you add/remove a user or group. Their presence does not indicate that you have been hacked. And if you have been hacked, removing those files will not help you.

Edit: If you remove /etc/shadow or /etc/gshadow, you won't be able to log in.
See man shadow and man gshadow for more information.

https://www.securityweek.com/researcher … -backdoors

For the live installer, choose sudo at the beginning. It's easier - you won't have to enter a password. It has no effect on whether you use sudo or not in the installed system.

I prefer the live installer - it's a faster install. (I may be biased - I wrote it.) If you want the default xfce desktop, you can have it in about 10 minutes. If you want a more customized system, you may be better off with one of the installer isos.

If you use a gpt partition table on a system that's booting in bios (legacy) mode, you'll need to create a small, unformatted partition with bios_grub flag in gparted (or EF02 in gdisk). (Click on Help from inside the installer for more info about this.)

The warning about the version of yad might be obsolete. It's been working fine for me for a few months. My best guess is that something got fixed in gtk3 or in virtualbox.

Yes, TDE with devuan is possible. Here is one you might want to look at:
http://exegnulinux.net/

I didn't think of it this morning, but you could just add 'noautologin' to the boot command. That would do the same as commenting out the sed command in 0160-sysvinit.

You might need to add some options to the genisoimage command. The xorriso command used to create the iso looks something like this.

xorriso -as mkisofs -r -J -joliet-long -l ${isohybrid_opt} \
    -partition_offset 16 -V "snapshot-live-cd"  -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot \
    -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table ${uefi_opt} -o "$snapshot_dir"/"$filename" iso/

isohybrid_opt is the path to isohdpfx.bin which is somewhere in /usr/lib/syslinux or /usr/lib/ISOLINUX. The exact location varies with the version of syslinux.
uefi_opt="-eltorito-alt-boot -e boot/grub/efiboot.img -isohybrid-gpt-basdat -no-emul-boot"

I'd be interested to know what error messages you got when trying to install refracta tools. If you don't want to do that in this thread, feel free to start another or email me. Thanks.

The failsafe  entry in  the  syslinux boot menu is missing 'username=devuan'. I checked the amd64 so far. It's probably the same in the i386. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.  If/when we do a point release, I'll fix it. (And in beowulf, too.)