Just performed an expert installation from the released netinstall on a VBox 7.0.26 efi, encrypted with LVM, no issues. After reboot installed Cinnamon via tasksel.

My conclusion: the media as supplied by Devuan seems to be fine. If you are stuck, I would check the checksums of you download first of all. Or there is a problem with your VMWare and/or VBox installation.

On a second try, now the upgraded system that did strike seems to accept the Suites in one line now:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d# cat devuan.sources
# Modernized from /etc/apt/sources.list
Types: deb
URIs: http://deb.devuan.org/merged/
Suites: excalibur excalibur-updates excalibur-security
Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/devuan-archive-keyring.gpg

# Modernized from /etc/apt/sources.list
#Types: deb
#URIs: http://deb.devuan.org/merged/
#Suites: excalibur-updates
#Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
#Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/devuan-archive-keyring.gpg

# Modernized from /etc/apt/sources.list
#Types: deb
#URIs: http://deb.devuan.org/merged/
#Suites: excalibur-security
#Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
#Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/devuan-archive-keyring.gpg

/etc/apt/sources.list.d# cat devuan-backports.sources
# Modernized from /etc/apt/sources.list
Types: deb
URIs: http://deb.devuan.org/merged/
Suites: excalibur-backports
Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/devuan-archive-keyring.gpg

Now apt update does this:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d# apt update
OK:1 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-backports InRelease
OK:2 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur InRelease
OK:3 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-updates InRelease
Holen:4 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-security InRelease [37,9 kB]
Es wurden 37,9 kB in 0 s geholt (145 kB/s).
Alle Pakete sind aktuell.

Just did some experiments in a VM updated from Daedalus. It works when I split up the suites into a list of single entries. When they are all in one line like in your example "excalibur excalibur-backports excalibur-proposed-updates  excalibur-updates" it does not work.

Miracle.

I am not familiar with sddm, I only use lightdm. You got a very complex installation.

When you are on the sddm login screen, there should be some sort of button behind that you should be able to choose.

What about the sources.list? Does that still exist? It must be deleted or renamed.

Me too. I don't use fstab, I wrote a cron script that is executed @reboot on the clients. My setup is a bit special anyhow. The server is shut down at nigth when all clients are off, and woken up in the morning by the first client in the morning. It checks if the network is available, if the server can be pinged, if the shares have been setup. Then the shares are mounted on the client(s). Server and clients are encrypted, the server is on a RAID6.

I do not see any big difference between Debian and Devuan regarding the implementation of a nfs server and client. The guides you can find on the internet do apply for both in general.

I have started a file server on Sarge, first of all with Samba for the Windows PCs on my family network. When I started with dual booting with Linux on my home PC, I discovered that I could export the shares I had prepared for Samba easily for nfs too. I started off with nfs(3), and moved to nfs4 some years later. There are a few differences in the way you export the shares, but there is no relation to any init system.

On the client side, I wasn't successful with mounting the shares via fstab due to the fact that the file server was put to sleep at night, and it would wake up past the client, and it needed some additional time for decrypting the shares. So I created a script that is invoked by cron @reboot. The script checks if the server is online, then if the shares are exported, and then it mounts the shares. When the server is off the operation of my workstation isn't affected, just the shares aren't there. I am still using this proven and reliable approach nowadays.

That hash at the front is there to indicate that this is a command to be used with root priviligues.

Well, that does not happen by chance or arbitrary. There is a definite command at least in Excalibur:

apt modernize-sources

Has to be called deliberately.

Thanks, didn't know that. Good news, makes things a bit easier.

Not quite, there is one more thing to do and some remarks.
Before changing the sources to excalibur, you need to run the usrmerge app (I use apt instead of apt-get, I like the progress bar). If you don't do that you get an error message and the upgrade is stalled.

# apt install usrmerge

Then, as long as Excalibur still is testing, the sources.list must contain just one line:

deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ excalibur main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

And the usual precautions do apply: make a backup and remove/deactivate all foreign repos from your sources.list.

A check if the memory on the stick really is the advertized one can be done with the f3 utility.

The first thing I do with any USB stick I buy.