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clueless

Member

Registered: Yesterday

Posts: 1  

Some stupid questions to prepare for Devuan installation

I want to try out Devuan, as a systemd free linux.

Before I do that, I would like to ask a few questions:

1. does ZFSbootmenu work well with Devuan?
(I ask because I am FreeBSD user, but FreeBSD isn't completely optimal for desktop/laptop. But I want to keep ZFS and boot environments as much as possible.)

2. what is the current state of Nvidia/Nouveau/amdgpu drivers?
(There have been serious issues with Nvidia drivers [e.g. freezes etc] and Nouveau [stability] recently, so I have been using AMD R5 430 as framebuffer recently. But the amdgpu driver has its own issues, incomplete repaint etc, so I wonder whether maybe Nvidia or Nouveau drivers have improved recently, so I can put to use my GT 730 cards again?)

3. does hibernate (suspend to disk) work well/reliably with Devuan? (and with ZFSbootmenu?)

Thank you very much

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,491  

Re: Some stupid questions to prepare for Devuan installation

Welcome to Devuan.

To your questions:
1.) I don't use ZFS, no idea how this is supported. I am on ext4, grub and luks encryption. Works for me.
2.) The current state of Nvidia/Nouveau/amdgpu drivers is exactly the same as for Debian. Devuan is a Debian - systemd + support for sysvinit and various other init systems. https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=3192

I guess this old GT730 is loosing support by NVidia, and older driver packages do no more build with current kernels.

3.) I use hibernation, it works fine on my grub system, Excalibur, encrypted, LightDM/Cinnamon DE.

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 750  

Re: Some stupid questions to prepare for Devuan installation

for the graphics driver nvidia,

think there is way to get it function on debian13/cdevuan6 for your card mentioned, atleast had so once if not mistaken, but it is a bit difficult , involves some workaround; think you could find info on net; at the moment i am using the gt 710 on another computer just with open-source driven, it function ok.
here is info on how to https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comment … rivers_on/

for amdgpu  it is not officiially supported on debian (yet) but for some newer cards there is rocm support (debian), so it could function also on devuan. for older card, you will find better route just using the card as it is (like r5 430), if you strictly need opencl or such, you might find ways to enable it (there is also onoging effort for newer thing like rusticl or something, but there are other people here more knowledgeable on such matters that might advise you.

if you use a high-end monitor or 4k, then the gt 730 might be lacking with nouveau, but i just office 16:10 1680x1050, and it function well enough; but the driver part can be installed, if you strictly need to (as discussed in relevant forumposts, with instructions).
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/i … -13/352727

Last edited by kapqa (Yesterday 13:54:19)

grunchy

Member

Registered: 2024-01-01

Posts: 46  

Re: Some stupid questions to prepare for Devuan installation

1. does ZFSbootmenu work well with Devuan?

i can't answer that, but i have been using ZFS for non-root storage without issue
for years. i have ZFS pools on spinning rust, SATA SSD and NVME SSD and
they're working well. the NVME set-up is an experiment, but it is working. i have
4x1TB NVME in RAID-0 (live fast, die young!) for storing QEMU qcow2 images
and it has not fallen over yet.

yeah, i am a fan of ZFS

due to licensing conflict, CDDL v. GPL, ZFS has to be bolted-on after the fact.
this is done via kernel modules that are built using linux kernel dkms system.

i prefer to use backports for ZFS to better stay up-to-date. so, for me, this is
what i did:

sudo apt install dkms
sudo apt install -t daedalus-backports zfs-dkms
sudo apt install -t daedalus-backports zfsutils-linux
sudo apt install -t daedalus-backports zfs-zed

the only ZFS-on-root how-to i could find on here is an old one (2020)
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=3794

there is another thread (2022) talking about using ZFS (somewhat). not
sure if it will be helpful to you, but just in case
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=5285

once installed, ZFS puts a bunch of scripts in /etc/init.d:
   zfs-import
   zfs-load-key
   zfs-mount
   zfs-share
   zfs-zed

the ZFS configuration file is /etc/modprobe.d/zfs.conf

and the trim+scrub cron jobs are in file /etc/cron/d/zfsutils-linux

hope this helps