On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 06:20:19PM +0000, Curtis Maurand via Dng wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm new to the mailing list, but not new to devuan. I've been running devuan ascii in production for a couple of years. I really like the product. My system is so much more stable without systemd and all the bull associated with Ubuntu.
>
> I've been trying to use the net-install from a USB stick on a system that does not have a CD-ROM attacted. It has been a failure.
>
> Here are the troubles. If any of you have work arounds, I'd be grateful
>
> first it complains about needing a non-free firmware for the wifi device and asks for a a non-existant CD. It keeps asking and I keep saying no. It look for the ISO that is loaded from the USB stick or go out to the network for the firmware since it asks again after the network loads and configures.
>
> It asks for a realtek driver for the realtek nic's but they seem to work OK.

Sorry. I don't know where to get the nonfree firmware if it isn't on
your installation media. Perhaps you are installing in a mode that
refuses nonfree anything? I believe there's an option in the installer
to allow nonfree firmware. That's an option the Free Software
Foundation complains about and refuses to consider Debian and Devuan to
be truly free.

See if you can find that option.

>
> When partitioning the disk, It sees the exisiting partitions and
> filesystems that are there (Ext4, BTRFS and SWAP). When I go to set
> the mount point and whether to use the partition I get the choice of
> "Do not use," Ext2, Fat16, and Fat32. No Ext4 or BTRFS which are the
> two that i need.

Maybe a workaround?

Are you planning to install the new system on those Ext4, BTRFS
partitions?

Or are you going to install it on new partitions and have the eventual
installed system use those partitions?

If the latter, you could install a minimal system on the partitions it
will let you use, and then afterward add the others to the /etc/fstab
file.

This whole situation puzzles me; I have never had to do this on a new
install.

I have done things like this on my server, which has had no new
installation of Debian/Devuan for over a decade. Create new partitions
for new file systems, copy the entire system over, adjust critical files
(like /etc/fstab) in the copied system, boot into it and then upgrade.
I go through this charade to make sure I have a fallback in case the
upgrade fails (it has once -- ran out of disk space in /usr) but it also
works when I want to change file systems.

But I've never had it on a new install.

-- hendrik

>
> At this point, I have to give up. I'm about to try the Desktop-Live. The net-install should work and have drivers for Ext4 at least, right?
>
> Should I install ascii and then do a dist-upgrade? I've done that to a couple of very lightweight systems (DNS servers) successfully.
>
> Thanks in advance
> Curtis

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