Refracta Snapshot (Excalibur) is Broken

onedevone · 2026-01-01 12:31:13

Short history (Devuan 5):
a) Previously on ver. 5 in the middle of the lifecycle refracta snapshot stopped working alltogether. Backporting from excalibur testing helped. Users never got the update.
b) Since the very beginning, on Devuan version 5, users had a dummy button for refracta snapshot. Pressing this button in menu, did not start refracta whatsoever. Pressing this button did nothing.
c) Going to Konsole and relogging to root ("su -") did not make refracta snapshot to start. It threw a bunch of cryotic errors.

Current version (Devuan 6):
Refracta snapshot does not work. Immediately, I used sudo -i to start it. Although it goes through the process, ISO cannot be booted. It cannot be booted from external usb stick (dd bs=1M if... of... oflag=fsync), nor from Ventoy (save yourselve some space and money using only one stick) formatted to ext4. Both dedicated stick and external soft cannot boot Refracta Snapthos ISOs.

My assumption (I'm guessing) that linux-live or busybox is not compatible with DEBIAN 12 or both. I tested on two computers (the one, on which ISO was created and onother linux-libre compatible). I tested both sticks (4 tests alltogether). Nothing boots. Worked on Devuan 5. It's a regression.

What is expected happen:
Fix refracta snapthot to work and test if it's booting
a) on Ventoy (reformat the boot partition to ext4)
b) on dedicated (money and space wasted) USB stick (dd)
Test Refracta Snaphsot as this is kind of a showstopper .

greenjeans · 2026-01-01 13:32:31

Test Refracta Snaphsot as this is kind of a showstopper

Well i'm your huckleberry for sure when it comes to testing Snapshot, lol. It's no exaggeration for me to say i've used Refracta Snashot around 250-300 times in the last year, both on Daedalus and Excalibur, and never once experienced a failure. I have isos available online now made with it, again with both daedalus and excalibur.

FYI Devuan doesn't work properly with Ventoy, there's some threads about that on here.

Last edited by greenjeans (2026-01-01 13:34:36)

fsmithred · 2026-01-01 15:08:22

Check the sha256sum of the iso to make sure the file wasn't corrupted during download. Refractsnapshot starts from the menu or terminal. There's no dummy "button" in the menu or elsewhere.

Possibly you are thinking of a Refracta iso (as opposed to a Devuan iso with refracta tools) which does have a menu entry for refracta2usb that does not actually start the application - it just throws up a window telling you to start the app from a root terminal. That's not a regression. It's always been like that.

If you get errors running an application, one way to get help with it is to allow potential helpers to read those error messages. They sometimes contain useful information.

To run refractasnapshot-gui from a root terminal, you need to just use 'su' instead of 'su -', or else use 'sudo' if you have it enabled, so that root will still be able to use the user's xserver.

Most of the packages in devuan come directly from debian and are not altered. This includes busybox, live-boot* and live-tools. Only the live-config* packages are forked by devuan, and that's to add support for runit. All the refracta tools work on debian, too.

rolfie · 2026-01-01 15:25:34

FYI Devuan doesn't work properly with Ventoy, there's some threads about that on here.

Thats true for Daedalus. All older iso's work fine on Ventoy, also does Excalibur (again).

greenjeans · 2026-01-01 15:37:52

Thats true for Daedalus. All older iso's work fine on Ventoy, also does Excalibur (again).

Cool, did not know that as I don't use Ventoy, just did some reading of the threads here about issues.

ajeto · Yesterday 15:16:35

"

Check the sha256sum of the iso to make sure the file wasn't corrupted during download. Refractsnapshot starts from the menu or terminal. There's no dummy "button" in the menu or elsewhere.

Possibly you are thinking of a Refracta iso (as opposed to a Devuan iso with refracta tools) which does have a menu entry for refracta2usb that does not actually start the application - it just throws up a window telling you to start the app from a root terminal. That's not a regression. It's always been like that.

If you get errors running an application, one way to get help with it is to allow potential helpers to read those error messages. They sometimes contain useful information.

To run refractasnapshot-gui from a root terminal, you need to just use 'su' instead of 'su -', or else use 'sudo' if you have it enabled, so that root will still be able to use the user's xserver.

Most of the packages in devuan come directly from debian and are not altered. This includes busybox, live-boot* and live-tools. Only the live-config* packages are forked by devuan, and that's to add support for runit. All the refracta tools work on debian, too."

I search duck.com and found this thread.

Inded Devuan 13 Excalibur has 2 bugs:

1. When you try the menu refracta software/scrip does not start. It does not start with "su -" either. I started it via "sudo -i". This is the first bug.
An excited user that choses Devuan Excalibur because he thinks that when he configures the system it will go as an ISO into an USB stick exactly as he had configured it, will be very disappointed. He goes to the menu and... zonk. It does not start any application (refracta snapshot). So it's a bug. Apple systems, Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, Windows, Android- when you go to menu and click an icon, it is expected that the app will start. Here: nothing happens.
2. I figured it out trying to start via "sudo -i". Indeed it works. I was very excited. Unfortunately, despide ISO being created (albeit in an unexpected place that it hard to find and refracta "summery" does not show where it went to!!!) it does not work. People mentioned Ventoy here.
Unfortunately neither "dd-ing" it to an USB stick nor rsyncing to Ventoy works. ISO does not boot at all . Too bad. So there definitely is a bug.
ISO does not boot.

FYI: I did check SHA256SUM. I always do for backups (clonezilla has now b3sum which can utilize all cores).

Would be nice to have working refracta snapshot that indeed creates WORKING/BOOTABLE ISOs.

P.S. I thought it was my fault, but apparently there is a bug. Will it be fixed?

very disappointed.

fsmithred · Yesterday 17:11:01

When you found the link on your search results, did you notice the color showed that you've been here before?

1. I can't reproduce your problem. Both refractasnapshot and refractainstaller start from the menu or from root terminal. If you start it from a live session, you don't need to enter a password.

2. The first screen on both programs has a Help button. The first sentence of the second paragraph of the refractasnapshot help says to read the config file. In the config file is a setting for where the newly created file is put. There's also an option in the menu to edit the config file or the excludes list.

In case you missed all of those, there's a summary screen that tells you where to find the finished snapshot. (in /home/snapshot or wherever you set it if you edited the config file)

When you quote a post, you should use quote tags or at least use quotation marks and a citation so that readers can distinguish my words from yours.

greenjeans · Yesterday 19:32:55

Again, have used Snapshot many times on excalibur over the last 6 months, worked fine every time and still does, I have excalibur-based isos on my sourceforge right now that were made with Snapshot.

This seems like a case of user-error.

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#1 2026-01-01 12:31:13

Refracta Snapshot (Excalibur) is Broken

#2 2026-01-01 13:32:31

Re: Refracta Snapshot (Excalibur) is Broken

#3 2026-01-01 15:08:22

Re: Refracta Snapshot (Excalibur) is Broken

#4 2026-01-01 15:25:34

Re: Refracta Snapshot (Excalibur) is Broken

#5 2026-01-01 15:37:52

Re: Refracta Snapshot (Excalibur) is Broken

#6 Yesterday 15:16:35

Re: Refracta Snapshot (Excalibur) is Broken

#7 Yesterday 17:11:01

Re: Refracta Snapshot (Excalibur) is Broken

#8 Yesterday 19:32:55

Re: Refracta Snapshot (Excalibur) is Broken

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