That's not quite correct. The addition of non-free to sources.list in the installer isos was an error. The addition of non-free wireless firmware in the live isos is the result of a decision. The live isos are frequently used by people to test devuan and by those who prefer to install without a mirror. Without the non-free firmware, a lot of people would not be able to get online and would not even know if their hardware is supported. We made it easy to remove the non-free firmware. If you prefer to have a system that never had it installed, then you can use the regular installer isos.

Note: the above-mentioned bug in the installer has been fixed.
https://git.devuan.org/devuan-packages/ … 7f366965c0

Is this what you want?
https://transfer.sh/FgcX7/ru.png

dpkg-reconfigure locales

checked ru_RU.UTF-8, selected en_US.UTF-8 as default locale.
Rebooted and added 'locales=ru_RU.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=ru' to the linux line of the boot command, but this did not work. (It does work in a live iso). Rebooted again and tried another language to confirm. It still didn't work.

What did work:
On login with lxdm, selected Russian in language and keyboard boxes.
I'm using openbox, lxpanel, lxterminal, leafpad and spacefm. I opened a few other programs randomly (I can't read anything here) and I see Russian. Even xarchiver, which for some reason is in English in the apps menu, has Russian in the menu bar.

You tried to update a live system. Ouch. It can be done, but understand what's going on. If you set it up for full persistence, then any changes or additions get stored on the persistent partition, in their normal location (i.e. full path). That persistent file system gets overlaid on the read-only live system.

So anything you changed did not make any changes in the live system on the first partition. If you boot without persistence and mount the persistent partition, you can see those files and delete anything that isn't your personal stuff. Then when you reboot with persistence, it will be just like the first time.

If you update the kernel, you'll only be updating the one in /boot in your live system. But the live system gets booted from the kernel in the /live folder in the root of the iso (or device). The kernel in /boot only gets used after a normal installation. Same is true for the initrd. You would need to copy those from /boot to /live and name them to match what's there (and what's in your boot menu). This might be the source of your wifi problems. Another possibility is if your update switched you from udev to eudev and the network interface names changed. Check the interface names with 'ifconfig' or 'ip a' and make sure that wicd is using the right name. (little triangle in upper right will get you to preferences in wicd)

One more catch - the first partition is read-only during a live session. So either plug the sd card into another system to mount it and copy the files or use an undocumented trick to copy the files. Since jessie, if you run with persistence, your root user will be able to write to the first partition. In fact, you don't even need a persistent volume to do this - you just need the word, persistence, in the boot command. When you do this, you might notice (hint: look!) that the first partition is mounted at /lib/live/mount/persistence/ instead of /lib/live/mount/medium/.

Last bit of advice - full persistence is nice for saving files and making some config changes. When you start running updates or adding software, you're filling up your space, and you're making less of your system read-only (aka - unhackable). If you want to make big changes like that, you might be better off making a new iso. You can then copy the contents of that iso to the sd card to replace the files with the updated system. You may or may not need to delete any system files that are on the persistent partition.

Oh yeah, the menu label. Those labels should be unique. If you get to the isolinux boot prompt, you can type that label in, press enter, and it will boot from that stanza. With two of them the same, I don't know which one would boot. My preference would be to change them to HDD and SD to keep them short and memorable, in case I ever need to type them in.

I'm not very clear on your setup, but you should be able to boot without persistence, mount both persistent partitions and copy from one to the other with rsync. Something like

rsync -avx mounted-source/ mounted-target/

Hey, that worked! Only took five seconds. Thanks!

I tried changing the timeouts to smaller numbers, but it didn't make a difference. Last group of numbers I tried was 1 2 3 4 5 6 and it still stalled for slightly more than 30 seconds.

You can read a little about persistence in the refract2usb help:
http://www.ibiblio.org/refracta/docs/re … ta2usb.txt

Basically, you need a separate filesystem, a persistence.conf file in the root of that filesystem, and some extra options in the boot command to use the persistent filesystem.

The 'other language' boot option doesn't work. The boot option, lang=xx_XX where xx and XX are your chosen country code only works with a custom script (refracta-lang) that is specifically for lightdm. If you want to change language, change that option to locales=xx_XX.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=xx. NOTE: That probably won't work right in jessie. It does work in ascii, probably because of the newer version of live-boot and live-config.

I didn't get much beyond booting it. It's a little sparse for my taste, and I'm kinda lost without completion. (Is there a way? It's not the tab key.) Oh, never mind. I found bash. Is there an apps menu hiding somewhere?

You might need to replace sddm with lightdm. Also, make sure you have the right libpolkit packages installed.
See (removed dead link)

Here's what was in the dead link.

Refractasnapshot and installer depend on live-config, live-boot, live-boot-initramfs-tools and live-config-sysvinit. They do not require or use live-tools. Something pulled in that package, and at the moment, I can't recall what it is.

I've made snapshots with openrc in the past with TriOS and more recently with devuan ascii. It works. If you have trouble with it next time, start a new thread and we'll get it sorted..

The message about 'seat' makes me think of systemd-related things.

Which libpolkit packages are installed?
consolekit or elogind?
Is libpam-elogind installed?

I have no idea why it would be intermittent.