Having too little time to spend struggling with a debootstrap cross
install, I built a devuan installation USB key, first with unetbootin
and then with a dd copy. Results the same in either case, so I'll just
describe my experience with the second.

I did # dd if=devuan-jessie-i386-alpha4-netboot.iso
        of=/dev/sda bs=4M; sync

I booted to the key and I choose expert install. When it said to insert
a key with my WiFi card driver, I did, but it did not seem to see or
query the key. So had to hook up an ethernet cable.

When I got to this point with ethernet, the installer failed to
automatically configure the network. Had to do it manually by entering
my host's IP address. Network configuration now succeeded.

Now there is a download of files needed for a base system. It checked
the mirror, it downloaded release files, and after some time the
progress bar reached 100%. Then I get "Bad archive mirror". I tried FTP,
I tried a more distant mirror, etc, but result was the same.

Why does the error appear after it seems to have already successfully
downloaded the files?

Haines Brown