On Thu, Jan 05, 2023 at 05:45:27PM -0700, Fred wrote:
> ...
> I will try your exact steps here tomorrow. However, your earlier post
> implied the .disk directory was in the root directory. I mounted the usb
> sdb1 on another computer and found the .disk directory does not exist. I
> created it and put the info file there as in the previous post.

Could you please verify that the iso you have does indeed have the
sha256sum of:
0923470af430e3d582a635956bbe4c13abc18fbaa4704e6deef3b362833e0ef5

because a missing "/.disk" directory was exactly the reason why new
devuan_chimaera_4.0.0_* isos were made, replacing the previous ones.

> I just checked on the problem pc.
> df -h shows two entries:
> tmpfs mounted on /run
> devtmpfs mounted on /dev
>
> This computer does not have a cdrom. It has a hard drive and a bunch of USB
> ports. I put the cd3 .iso on another sd card with dd but it is not detected
> as a cdrom. On another computer it shows up as sdb with no partitions. If
> mounted as sdb it does show lots of files.
> The installer in the problem pc is very single minded about wanting a cdrom
> and I found no way to make it accept the cd3 usb (which shows up as sdc).
>
> If I have to I can buy a usb interface cdrom drive. However, the server
> .iso should have everything included on the usb with the installer and the
> cdrom should not be necessary.

Yes, the first USB should have it all, and its first partition should
be mountable as an iso9660 filesystem onto /cdrom. I.e. either
/dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdb should be mountable as a iso9660 filesystem on
/cdrom by the installer.

"The installer" in itself is the initrd.img that you find on the path
/boot/isolinux/initrd.gz that gets unpacked in the intial boot
loading, plus extended with some packages from the accompaning pool on
the media.

Ralph.