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tyder

Member

From: Oslo, Norway

Registered: 2016-12-19

Posts: 10  

Display problems with 6.1.1 live

I have tried 6.1.1 from USB stick. - After a bit of strange behavior and a couple of writing attempts, which others have also reported, I booted a HP Probook 440 G6, and XFCE looked very nice. No problems with WIFI either. Mounting internal and external partitions went just fine, but I often got r/w error messages at ordinary administrative tasks.

Trying to run the squashfs image was worse. I can boot and run the Debian 13.3.0-Lxqt ISO just fine in kvm, that's the first check of such images for me. 
But doing the same with the Devuan ISO produced neither error messages nor display output. I think this should be possible.
Booting itself was likely not the issue. When setting up the squashfs image with kernel and initrd, and starting it with legacy grub, everything seems to go just fine with the init processes until X11 startup. The display goes black - looks like the same behavior as with kvm. All the Debian images back to 6 have worked with this procedure, and I'm writing this on a remastered 13.3.0-install.  So it simply can't be that troublesome to fix.

So, I would be extremely happy with a release where this works out of the box, and just out of greed, I also wish for an Lxqt live companion to the Xfce-ISO.
If I can help in any meaningful way, that would be very fine for me. I think the Trixie/Excalibur releases could be a point where several long time Debian users, like myself, start to phase in Devuan. Poor Man's Installs, like the ones I use, are a nice low-threshold approach to such conversions.

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,850  

Re: Display problems with 6.1.1 live

Some more detail about exactly what you tried with which iso would help. Also, if you can find any of these other relevant discussions that you mentioned and provide the links, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm doing 15 different things and couldn't find them.

I have no trouble booting the isos in qemu or virtualbox in bios mode, but I have mixed results booting them in uefi mode. I don't know the reason for that. Gathering all the evidence in once place would be a good start.

For example, this works:

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 devuan_excalibur_6.1.1_amd64_desktop-live.iso

But trying to boot that iso in qemu uefi fails.

Meanwhile, this one works in uefi even though it was made the same way as the excalibur iso.

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd devuan_freia_7-preview-2026-01-12_amd64_desktop-live.iso

And this one works (excalibur):

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd refracta-isos/13.2/refracta_13.2_xfce_amd64-20251205_1133.iso

Edit: This one that I made for a wifi test yesterday works in uefi, too. It's just the default devuan excalibur desktop install that was created with refractasnapshot instead of live-sdk. The uefi part of the build is the same for both methods, so I'm at a loss for an explanation.

https://get.refracta.org/files/experimental/excalibur_nonfree-20260224_2014.iso

tyder

Member

From: Oslo, Norway

Registered: 2016-12-19

Posts: 10  

Re: Display problems with 6.1.1 live

Thank you very much! From your advice, I have experimented some more,  and I have (partially) good news.
This simple use of kvm has always worked, and in recent years, I have only used kvm in a very primitive way, just checking the functionality of the ISO image. E.g. 12.7.0:

sudo kvm -m 2048 debian-live-12.7.0-amd64-lxde.iso &

So, i tried the same for 6.1.1:

sudo kvm -m 2048 devuan_excalibur_6.1.1_amd64_desktop-live.iso &

Opening screen comes up. No luck in ordinary graphics mode, BUT when I now tried failsafe and root login, everything seems to work! Even web browsing with Firefox (- a standard test with Debian images). And even smoother with image run from m2 disk than from USB flash. Very good.
So, next question is, how to fix this in the more general display case, and get it up and running in a Poor Man's Install (PMI)?
I'm happy to start with with Xfce, but Lxqt should be a choice, I think :-)

Last edited by tyder (Today 17:11:26)

tyder

Member

From: Oslo, Norway

Registered: 2016-12-19

Posts: 10  

Re: Display problems with 6.1.1 live

Small update:
I could even run

apt-get update 

and

apt install rxvt-unicode.

From ISO under kvm. Install went fine, wherever that landed...
Could I then run

urxvt &

and get a working terminal window? Yes.

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,850  

Re: Display problems with 6.1.1 live

Can you get different results using my qemu commands?

All the major desktops are available in the installer isos.

tyder

Member

From: Oslo, Norway

Registered: 2016-12-19

Posts: 10  

Re: Display problems with 6.1.1 live

Seemed to work exactly the same way. Using

sudo qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 devuan_excalibur_6.1.1_amd64_desktop-live.iso &

did not help at all with the graphics problem. That has to be sorted out.
If I can get some tool use instructions, I might be able to make that Lxqt-live-ISO I wish for myself ;-)
I need a runnable setup than can be used almost everywhere, therefore squashfs'ing  an ordinary install won't do for me.

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,850  

Re: Display problems with 6.1.1 live

Ok, I'm curious to know if the excalibur-nonfree iso that I linked above works.

You could build an iso using live-sdk, but for a one-off, it's easier to install what you want in a VM and then run refractasnapshot to make the live iso. With live-sdk, if you list a package to be installed that doesn't exist, then the build fails and you have to start over again. If you're working in a VM and planning to use refractasnapshot, if you try to install a package that doesn't exist, that one apt command fails, and you still have whatever work you've done building up the system.

Here are instructions for live-sdk:
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=551

Here are instructions for refractasnapshot:
https://git.devuan.org/devuan/refractas … apshot.txt

dzz

Member

From: Exmouth, South West England

Registered: 2016-12-01

Posts: 102  

Re: Display problems with 6.1.1 live

Old toshiba laptop here, i3, 8gb ram.. 'devuan.iso' is a convenience relative symlink to devuan_excalibur_6.1.1_amd64_desktop-live.iso ..

Works:

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048  devuan.iso

(efi basic options) Boots to a black screen only. Lots of whirring fan noise:

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd  devuan.iso

Works:

$ qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd  -boot d -cdrom devuan.iso

Works even better:

/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 -k en-gb -machine accel=kvm -m 1924 -boot d -cdrom devuan.iso -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd -boot once=d,menu=off -nic user,hostfwd=tcp::8888-:22 -rtc base=localtime -smp cores=2,threads=1,sockets=1 -display gtk -name "devuan.iso"

Those options are lifted from my own script, created because I never remember all the options and just want to drop a ISO in a directory and run it. They evolved over time, some maybe irrelevant, redundant or long forgotten what they even do.

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,850  

Re: Display problems with 6.1.1 live

This one (dzz's third example) shows me the boot menu and goes to black screen.

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd  -boot d -cdrom devuan_excalibur_6.1.1_amd64_desktop-live.iso

I can get to serial console in qemu and log in. Slim is not running, xorg is running. I can kill xorg, then log into console as root and run startx. Desktop comes up. Alternatively, I can drop to console, install lightdm, start lightdm, get graphical login and desktop comes up.

This one (abbreviated fourth example - no network settings) works from boot menu to desktop.

qemu-system-x86_64 -machine accel=kvm -m 1924 -boot d -cdrom devuan_excalibur_6.1.1_amd64_desktop-live.iso -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd -boot once=d,menu=off