On Sat, Oct 19, 2024 at 3:06 PM Haines Brown via Dng <dng@???> wrote:
>
> Having done an expert installation of Debian or Devuan perhaps a dozen
> times, the Devuan refracta installer has me beat.
>
> I'm running Daedalus from a SSD on a desktop machine. I installed a
> second SSD and on which wish to install Daedalus as well. I had
> started to a cross install and ao this second SSD is partioned
> with gdisk and its parstitions formatted. There are 9 partitions with
> swap being the 10th. Here are some examples:
>
> partition 1 labeled boot is 5 GB GUID. Type is Linux file system
> partution 2 is 550 GB with EF00 file system and abel /boot/efi No flag
> partition 3 is 20 GB partition format type 8304
> partition 4 is 300 GB format type 8302 and label /home
> ...
> partion 100 is 30 GB with partition type sw amd label swap
>
> The problem is that when I boot after the installation, it fails
> because fsck cannot run, with status 8 (operational error). Web
> searches no help. Error can be "Checking root file system...fsck.ext4"
> "Permission denied while trying to open /run/rootdev"
>
> I would like to go to mainteance, but refracta does not recognize root
> password (I reinstalled four times and was particularly careful about
> the password).
>
> Does refracta have an "expert" installation option? Or later do you
> simply choose to repartion?
>
> Refracta sees two EFI parttions. I've tried to install with both but
> outcomc the same. Athough not usual choice I decided to stick with the
> efi partition on the new disk becaue I may have damaged the old disk.
>
> I stick with default options except to provide labels in fstab
>
> Since I already have parttions hopefully formatted I skip
> partitioning. If one chooses to repartition, how does the installer
> know to which of the partions to send files. Some are unlabeled.
>
Not speaking as an expert only have reinstalled a few times.
So from experience - - - afaik you MUST not skip the partitioning.
Now you can tell it not to reformat any partition you want to keep
and I found things worked better when I reformatted / /var and /usr
(yes I"m one of those that uses a separate /usr partition - - - may need
to change that thinking but I also use a separate /usr/local partition)
and just let the reinstall do its stuff keeping things like /home mainly.

If you are repartitioning then again afaik you must reformat.
If someone on here with lots of system experience says I'm out to lunch
- - - that may be so but I have been able to reinstall successfully.

HTH at least a little bit.