[SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

themouse · 2024-04-22 16:57:50

Hello, everybody.
Unfortunately, recently I have encountered a very annoying problem on Devuan Excalibur or Ceres. Just to note, this is the first time I started to use the testing or unstable branch. Recently, there was an upgrade, after which the system became awfully slow. To be honest, I installed virt-manager before and, because I was kinda angry about that, I accused the virt-manager or VMware services (which also became famous for me for slowing up the system). And also, when I boot up my system, I have an error related to iwlwifi with some dump. I don't really understand what does this error means, because my Wi-Fi is working well. And after that ill-fated upgrade, the same error repeated three times for some reason.
But, after I had reinstalled my distro to Devuan Daedalus and upgraded it to Excalibur, I got the same problem. And I installed nothing that will really slow up my system. So, I returned to Devuan Daedalus on my main computer.
But I also have a laptop working on Excalibur. I thought that it might happen only in Excalibur, so, I decided to try Ceres just for interest. I got the same thing.
After some investigation I made, I found that this is related to elogind and libpam-elogind. I removed them and installed dummy-logind instead and system stopped to be slow.
But that's not all.
It looks like the same packages caused another issue - polkit (or something else, but I think this is polkit) refused to work properly. For example, when I try to mount an another partition, it gives me an error like 'Not authorized to perform operation', also I'm not able to switch between Wi-Fi networks for the same reason (org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.network-control request failed: not authorized) and power off or reboot my computer from Xfce.
I would get by with reinstalling the system on my laptop to Devuan Stable, but I want to dig into this problem.

Has anyone encountered this really strange problem too? Or nobody use Devuan Excalibur or Ceres?

golinux · 2024-04-22 17:07:18

Welcome to the forum!

Testing (Excalibur) and unstable are very unreliable at this time partly due to the usrmerge. Have a look at the announcement:
UsrMerge Status: Testing/Excalibur and more

Other issues are also discussed on this very forum.

themouse · 2024-04-22 19:10:32

Well, this package was already installed even before the updates. And I hadn't any problems related to /usr merge. Your advice to make backups is really useful in this situation.
But what am I supposed to do with an already broken distro? I had already reinstalled my Devuan on my main computer which I didn't want to do. But I like to do experiments anyway...

Last edited by themouse (2024-04-22 19:23:43)

rolfie · 2024-04-22 19:47:00

Well, if you want a stable system with minimum hasle stay with Daedalus.

If you are ready for the unexpected, try Excalibur or Testing, and for the often broken, try Ceres or Unstable. Freshly updated/developed packages first land in Unstable, when they have sort of proven to generally work, they may be forwarded to Testing.

Testing some day becomes Stable, but currently this is about 2 years to go.

You only should use Testing if you are ready to accept uneven ground and if you are willing to contribute to this phase, or if you have a good reason to do so, i.e. you have so new hardware that its supported in Testing only. Something for the experienced user. And Unstable will be even rougher.

Just my two cents ...

Last edited by rolfie (2024-04-22 19:47:25)

themouse · 2024-04-22 20:12:55

I exactly understand you. However, I don't have any reason to install Testing or Ceres anyway. Just wanted to get new software releases and expect that the testing branch may be more stable than Sid. But I mentioned, sometimes I like to do experiments and like getting more hassles, you know.
But I didn't find any information on the Internet about any issues I got, that's unpleasant. However, I am always done to reinstall the operating system if something happens, thanks to the ability to create a separate /home partition, but reinstallation of software is another task...

Last edited by themouse (2024-04-23 12:39:36)

themouse · 2024-04-22 20:19:40

Let's not forget, I wanted to ask for a solution from somebody who has encountered these problems too.

rolfie · 2024-04-22 20:43:30

The solution is to wait for the solution ..... Have you raised a bug report? It may be fixed in the future.

The solution will come some day.

Last edited by rolfie (2024-04-22 20:44:55)

themouse · 2024-04-23 19:03:35

I haven't solved it anyway. I started to use Devuan Stable again. I hope this will be fixed in time, too.
Before, I installed Devuan Daedalus on the virtual machine and tried to upgrade it to Ceres, but it was bricked and I got Busybox. This finally forced me to return to the stable branch.
Maybe, I'll file a bug report later, I'll leave a link here if I do this.
If somebody has encountered this problem too, I am sorry for this inconvenience, I somehow feel uncomfortable about this topic...

Last edited by themouse (2024-04-23 19:04:32)

delgado · 2024-04-23 19:27:43

I installed Devuan Daedalus on the virtual machine and tried to upgrade it to Ceres, but it was bricked

One possible reason might be the package 'usrmerge'. These days it should be installed before changing to ceres.

themouse · 2024-04-23 19:39:29

One possible reason might be the package 'usrmerge'.

That's it! I got dpkg errors related to usrmerge, ntfs-3g and sane-utils.

golinux · 2024-04-23 20:11:19

Did you not see this link that I posted yesterday?
UsrMerge Status: Testing/Excalibur and more

themouse · 2024-04-24 04:58:15

Did you not see this link that I posted yesterday?

I've seen this if you're worried. I just figured that my main system continued to work because it looked like I did not have this package installed. However, I anyway have /bin, /lib (/lib32 and /lib64), and /sbin folders merged with /usr.

bilhook · 2024-04-24 17:29:03

thank you rolfie for your wise words, you should only use testing if you are willing to contribute to this phase.
there are numerous people on this forum, experienced commendable people, saying install usrmerge.
this is not a good idea.
correct me if I am wrong but usr-is-merged dummy package is what you should do.

rolfie · 2024-04-24 18:40:25

No, running the usrmerge installation will become mandatory with Debian 13/Devuan 6. There is NO way to avoid this. Lots of fighting and bitching, but no help, its a Debian project decision, and they are pulling all roots for not merging now during development.

Running with Daedalus on my workstation, I have set up two VMs with Excalibur based on Daedalus cli installations about 6 months ago. My first step before changing the sources to Excalibur was to run usrmerge as it is recommended now in the documentation. And both of them work well.

Last edited by rolfie (2024-04-24 19:33:19)

golinux · 2024-04-24 19:17:27

Which was instructed in the link I posted yesterday . . . sigh . . .

ralph.ronnquist · 2024-04-24 20:52:04

When installing the package usrmerge it will try to change the file system so that some root directories get changed into symbolic links for the same-named directories in /usr; those are what I call the "silly-links".

Unfortunately the usrmerge developers seemingly opted for going about this in the worst way possible, so the installation of usrmerge is likely to fail successively, requiring some amount of operator hands-on and reinstallation. Once installed, it gets replaced with the usr-is-merged package as indicator or flag for apt/dpkg to not install usrmerge again, ever.

All in all, it's better and almost necessary (esp for avoiding that operator hands-on) when shifting to excalibur, to install usrmerge on daedalus, i.e. before actually shifting. There is no technical difference difference between having or not having silly-links, except for the cases where a package installs binaries with a /bin path and then uses them on a /usr/bin path or vice versa (looking at you, busybox), in which case silly-links are required.

If you want to set up silly-links yourself you only have to make sure that the pathnames /lib* get copied and replaced with their links in "atomic steps"; i.e. you cannot use a shell script that separates "rm /lib" from "ln -sTf usr/lib /lib" specifically because the script intepreter's running of "ln" will require that the ELF-loader is found on its "/lib/.." path. (It's pretty obvious how to work around that though, for example by using busybox-static or , say, newlisp).

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2024-04-22 16:57:50

[SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#2 2024-04-22 17:07:18

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#3 2024-04-22 19:10:32

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#4 2024-04-22 19:47:00

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#5 2024-04-22 20:12:55

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#6 2024-04-22 20:19:40

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#7 2024-04-22 20:43:30

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#8 2024-04-23 19:03:35

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#9 2024-04-23 19:27:43

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#10 2024-04-23 19:39:29

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#11 2024-04-23 20:11:19

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#12 2024-04-24 04:58:15

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#13 2024-04-24 17:29:03

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#14 2024-04-24 18:40:25

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#15 2024-04-24 19:17:27

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

#16 2024-04-24 20:52:04

Re: [SOLVED] Devuan Excalibur/Ceres started to work slowly after the recent update

Board footer