Hi,

On 16/11/15 13:00, Hughe janpenguin@??? wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I tried to install Duvuan using Devuan installer few times but all the
> attempts failed due to partitioning the hard disk, followed by GRUB
> installation at the end. So I used Debian installer (7.0 and 8.2) to
> create basic Debian system, and then upgraded to Devuan system one by
> one.
>
> The system setup was
> /dev/sda - bootable USB stick
> /dev/sdb - Hard disk
>
> [Partition disks] could not handle manual selection.
> When I chose manual, it complained "No root file system."
>
> Partition disks
> No root file system
> No root file system is defined.
> Please correct this from the partitioning menu.

I installed official images of Devuan several times doing a manual
partition with no issues. How are you partitioning the hard disk? The
most current partitioning is:

root ->  /        ext4
home ->  /home    ext4
swap ->  swap

> On 'Guided - use the largest continous free space', how dose it know the
> free space on the hard disk which is already partitioned?

Devuan/Debian installer has many *.udeb mini-packages, each of one with
its own mission. Those packages are exclusively for the installer, and
not for the installed system in the target. I call them "mini-packages"
because the quality control is less strict comparing to a *.deb package.
The manager of the partitioning in Devuan-installer is partman.

> Guided partition kept the installationg going, but in the final stage of
> GRUB boot loader, it failed to detect the Devuan partition.
>
> Below is the error message.
>
> Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk
>
> Unable to install GRUB in /dev/sda
> Executing 'grub-install /dev/sda' failed.
>
> This is a fatal error.

It's strange... Are you using a live system? If the filesystem.squashfs
-mounted in the target- hasn't installed all the grub dependencies, then
grub-install will fail obviously.

> Another inconvenient issue which inherited from Debian installer is, the
> installer does not allow to change English keyboard layout from Qwerty
> to other one. In my case, I'm a full-time Colemak user. If I didn't have
> a qwerty keyboard, it would be difficult to use Devuan installer.
>
> Qwerty layout became defacto standard. But some keyboard makers offer
> Dvorak, Colemak layout for customers. This means they care about
> minorities. Debian has been ignorant or lazy about this issue.
>
> Debian supports non-Qwerty keyboard layouts though.
> # dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
> # service keyboard-setup restart
>
> Regards,
> Hughe