On Sun, Jun 04, 2017 at 09:54:38AM +0100, KatolaZ wrote:
> I don't know exactly what your custom "installation routine" entails,
> but since there have been a few dozen thousands successful Devuan
> installations in the last few months, and nobody has reported anything
> even remotely similar to the problems you talk about, shouldn't we
> probably consider at least as a remote option the possibility that
> there is something not entirely right in the custom procedure you are
> using, or something peculiar in your specific system configuration,
> that might have little to do with Devuan?

Yes, I agree, but my "routine" for installation is not "custom", but
follows installer defaults. I had no problem with the Jessie Beta
install, and the first time I installed Jessie 1.0.1 I was able to
install many packages before I lost the ability to execute. On
subsequent installations I lost ability to execute anything right from
start. I could run nano, but not aptititude. Bash found former but not
later, although both in /user/bin. It is almost as if I broke hardware
when I installed a package. Next time I'll first run mkfs.ext4 on the
disk.

I put the Jessie amd64 ISO on a key. Because I had incomplete ISO at one
point, after doing

# dd if=devuan_jessie)1.0.0_amd64_DVD.iso of=/dev/sdd bs=4M; sync

I did checksum. I had no trouble booting to it, but could not install
the installer components from "CD" because my key not recognized. So
used Devuan repository for them instead.

Among installer components, I installed the mbr-udeb for PCs because I
assumed that meant to use the UBR. But now I wonder if it means to use
MBR for 32-bit system.

When it came to partitioning, I choose the default no to UEFI. I put
/boot into / without breaking it out as I usually do. I don't quite
follow the default partition order, and I add two custom partitions.

When it came to configure APT, I chose a network mirror. Next time I'll
try to get packages from my USB key. Found I had to use http protocol
because ftp didn't work. In collections to install, I un-select desktop
environment. I suppose the justification for Devuan is to avoid such
bloat.

After installing GRUB2 the last two times, I go immediately to a shell
instead of a reboot. I find that in the /boot/grub/ directory the
i386-pc directory is missing, and so was unable to boot the last two
installations. This strikes me as a problem of 32/64-bit confusion, but
don't know how that is possible.

Haines