The second post in this thread suggests trying some different boot options with msi laptops.
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2313838

Try the no-probe or failsafe option in the boot menu or some combination of the options listed there. You can see the boot command by pressing the TAB key (for isolinux, booting bios) or 'e' (for grub, booting uefi). 

Or try adding 'single' to the boot command and see if you can boot to single-user mode.

The last message is from xorg. The xorg in the iso is just the jessie version. It's not from backports. If you feel like experimenting, there's a live iso made from ascii that has newer xorg. It also has openrc and eudev. Wireless firmware is not installed, but the packages are there to be installed without a network.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/refracta/file … 3_2222.iso
(note: logins and passwords are different on this iso: root/root and user/user)

For the record - this is on a refracta-jessie that was upgraded to ascii. So I started with xfce. It also has icewm and openbox, and I use lxpanel and lxterminal with ob. But I don't have the full lxde destkop. I've also had other weird stuff with this installation. Today I had to add net.ifnames=0 to the boot command a couple of times to have network connection. Normally I don't need to do that with this install, even though it's using 4.9 kernel.

Tested another install on the same machine. This one started as a minimal install, upgraded to ascii, then added apps. In xfce and openbox, gparted won't start from the menu, but if I start gparted-pkexec in terminal, it asks for password. This install also has lxqt, and there, I get a graphical window asking for the root password like it should. (lxqt-policykit-agent runs)

I seem to be the only one with this problem (the one in the subject line) so I won't file a bug report on it. At some point I'll do another refracta jessie to ascii upgrade and watch what happens. The current one has been through a lot to get where it is.

fungus, look at what got updated in ceres that did not get updated in ascii. That should narrow it down.  Look at /var/log/apt/history.log or see what the newest packages are in /var/cache/apt/archives.

nathg,

Thanks for the reminder. I tried replacing mate-polkit with policykit-1-gnome and I get the same behavior. (gparted runs without password).

I tried running without a display manager, and I'm getting inconsistent results. Sometimes I can break it so gparted doesn't run (in terminal it gives me an error message about trying to run it as another user and I don't have permission) and sometimes it does run. And sometimes I end up with no input in console and have to use sysrq keys to reboot.

So far, I have not found the right combination to cause pkexec to ask me for a password. At least not today. I have been asked for a password in terminal a couple days ago.

Unprivileged users should be able to search package names and descriptions. They should not be allowed to install software or resize partitions (as I just did). That's a security risk.

I found this bug report, concerning the problem that most people are having. It's not very helpful.
pkexec: Synpatic & gParted fails to authenicate
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=780275

And this one about the relationship between pkexec and sudo, also not very helpful. My user is not in the sudo group. User did have sudo privs for shutdown, reboot, suspend and hibernate. I removed those privs and the problem with gparted persists.
policykit-1: members of group sudo become root with pkexec while ignoring /etc/sudoers
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=869922

Here's my polkit file for gparted:

# cat /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/com.ubuntu.pkexec.gparted.policy 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE policyconfig PUBLIC
 "-//freedesktop//DTD PolicyKit Policy Configuration 1.0//EN"
 "http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/PolicyKit/1/policyconfig.dtd">
<policyconfig>

  <action id="com.ubuntu.pkexec.gparted">
    <message>Authentication is required to run the GParted Partition Editor</message>
    <icon_name>gparted</icon_name>
    <defaults>
      <allow_any>auth_admin</allow_any>
      <allow_inactive>auth_admin</allow_inactive>
      <allow_active>auth_admin</allow_active>
    </defaults>
    <annotate key="org.freedesktop.policykit.exec.path">/usr/sbin/gparted</annotate>
    <annotate key="org.freedesktop.policykit.exec.allow_gui">true</annotate>
  </action>

</policyconfig>

Here's what /var/log/auth.log has to say when I open gparted from the menu:

Aug 17 19:35:45 refracta-ascii pkexec[5206]: pam_unix(polkit-1:session): session opened for user root by (uid=1000)
Aug 17 19:35:45 refracta-ascii pkexec[5206]: user: Executing command [USER=root] [TTY=unknown] [CWD=/home/user] [COMMAND=/usr/sbin/gparted]

I've seen that blink, too. I have another ascii install that won't let me start gparted from the menu, but running gparted-pkexec in terminal does ask for the password. You don't need to use sudo to run gparted-pkexec, because pkexec should take care of asking for the password. Well, you shouldn't need sudo. If you do need it, then this is more broken than I thought.

I guess I need to compare package lists between my two installs. The second one started out as a minimal jessie that was upgraded and then just a few things added.

I don't know if you include the Refracta boot help in your isos, but check it out:

cat /usr/lib/refractasnapshot/iso/isolinux/f4.txt

(I'm not gonna paste it here, because it's full of ugly formatting characters.)

Also see 'man live-boot' and 'man live-config' for many awesome things you can do at the boot command.

I don't know if this works in ceres. If you're brave enough to try it, please let us know what happens.

lxde is still around and will still be around for awhile. It has not been abandoned. I either read that somewhere or was told that by one of the devs or maintainers for lxde in irc. (Can't remember name or which irc channel, but it must have been #devuan or #devuan-dev.)

lxqt is also around. I'm not sure, but I think it exists because gtk is losing its mind, and lxqt will be there when gtk3 finally goes totally insane.

My Xwrapper.config (in ascii) has these lines:

needs_root_rights=yes
allowed_users=console

I'm using slim-1.3.6-5+devuan4rc5a1

I just did update/upgrade, and everything is still working correctly.

Update: I upgraded another installation. This one was a refracta jessie that got upgraded to ascii, and then I replaced lightdm with the same version of slim I named above. The Xwrapper.config in this system only has the one line (like yours) and everything still works.

allowed_users=console

Parazyd explained to me that debootstrap is now in extra so that it's available for other distros. I haven't tried that new version yet.

I think this is your problem here:

xorriso : FAILURE : Given path does not exist on disk: -boot_image system_area='/usr/lib/ISOLINUX/isohdpfx.bin'

It's not finding isohdpfx.bin. If it's not in /usr/lib/ISOLINUX/isohdpfx.bin then install live-build. More likely, the /usr part of the path got lost from the xorriso command, which is probably in the blend file. (if not, it's in lib/libdevuansdk/zlibs/iso  line 109 or so, but you really shouldn't change it there.)

Are you following directions on this page?
https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

I think you're supposed to stop X before you run nvidia-xconfig. (not sure, it's been awhile)

You may or may not need to add "nomodeset" to the boot command. You should not need to purge and reinstall xorg. I think you do need to blacklist nouveau.