Devuan on Pyra


klapse

klapse

Central Scrutinizer
Joined
Aug 30, 2012
Messages
1,932
Location
Germany
Because the Great Spirit guides me...

I want Devuan on pyra.

This is not intended to rehash the flame wars over systemd. If you're going to post here, please make it a constructive contribution to getting devuan working on the Dragonbox Pyra.

I've been running devuan ascii on pi3 (aarch64) and asside from a few hiccups, it's very nice. Will have to go back to armhf to get hw accel on h264 and gpu though, as RasbPi foundation hasn't released mmal/vc4 drivers for aarch64 (yet?).

My main concern is, if we can't make devuan the default Pyra OS (which I think we should still consider doing), can we build our .dbps without systemd dependencies, or is that basically impossible?

I've talked to lord-of-all-devuan-on-arm, paralyzd (Ivan J.) and he seems quite keen to build devuan for it. When Pyra gets close to production, I would like to get 10 people to donate 70 euro in Dragonbox vouchers toward sending him a unit (or 20 people donating 35 euro, or some mix of the two).

Devuan homepage: https://devuan.org/
Devuan mirror: http://tux.rainside.sk/devuan/devuan_jessie/embedded/
Devuan arm sdk: https://git.devuan.org/sdk/arm-sdk
on Freenode, #devuan-arm

(if there's a better forum category for this thread, please move it)
 
Are there any dbps with systemd dependencies currently? What specific systemd ecosystem dependencies would you suspect becoming relevant in the future? If pnds are anything to go by, dbps will mostly be regular userspace applications. Can you point to examples where such would explicitly depend on systemd? Answering your question whether dbps can be built without such dependencies requires analyzing where it may be relevant or restrictive either way.
 
Devuan will never be the default OS for a single reason :
ED want to ship a device with all features working. On devuan, you will never have the SGX drivers installed. So that clearly close that question.

But having devuan running on the pyra will be definatly possible. I dont have any interest on that subject matter (since no SGX drivers is deal breaker for me). But surely, one can make a clean custom kernel for devuan and boot devuan on the pyra.

Having the dbps working will be all a different story. There's 2 caveas :
- dbpd depend on systemd (as far as I know), but that dependency is ratheer light. As long as you have dbus, with some patch it should be doable.
- dependency support will be a hell. All dpbs declare their system dependencies, but these dependencies are based on debian packages. Missing packages make dpbd refuse to start the dbp. So if the package dont have the same name on devuan (or dont exist) you're screwed.
 
The only dependency the dbp system has on systemd, is the init script. I have two version in repo, the systemd one was the first one aTc got working.

Refuse is a harsh word, more like "nag at you". In true linux spirit, the button to launch anyway isn't going anywhere, and if running dbps on other distros will ever become a thing, I might add hooks for package name translation.
 
Just a simple question, what's the benefits of using Devuan over just removing systemd off of Debian?
Here is a guide showing how to do it http://without-systemd.org/wiki/ind...systemd_from_a_Debian_jessie/sid_installation
But I've never tried it and don't know how well it would work on the Pyra but if for some reason one cannot get Devuan working on the Pyra it might be the next best thing for people who just don't want systemd, and if the SGX driver still works without systemd on the Pyra then it might even be a better option for some. Not to say that I don't want Devuan on the Pyra the more OS'es the Pyra support the better I say. I love when devices supports more then one OS :)
 
I'm not 100% myself, but I assume it gives you better support if you're running something you didn't just hack together myself. I myself am running a community provided 32-bit x86 port of archlinux, and had to go running to their freenode irc channel to fix a problem recently.
 
sebt3 said:
Devuan will never be the default OS for a single reason :
ED want to ship a device with all features working. On devuan, you will never have the SGX drivers installed. So that clearly close that question.

But having devuan running on the pyra will be definatly possible. I dont have any interest on that subject matter (since no SGX drivers is deal breaker for me). But surely, one can make a clean custom kernel for devuan and boot devuan on the pyra.

Having the dbps working will be all a different story. There's 2 caveas :
- dbpd depend on systemd (as far as I know), but that dependency is ratheer light. As long as you have dbus, with some patch it should be doable.
- dependency support will be a hell. All dpbs declare their system dependencies, but these dependencies are based on debian packages. Missing packages make dpbd refuse to start the dbp. So if the package dont have the same name on devuan (or dont exist) you're screwed.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. The names should be the same, but versions wouldn't be always.

Never have SGX drivers installed? Why?
 
Last edited:
Besides not using systemd are there any other benefits with using Devuan? reading the Wikipedia on Devuan it doesn't mention anything else changing.
 
Not as far as I've heard technically; their only complaint against debian was their adoption of systemd, so apart from that they're trying to maintain parity with the mainstream debian. Non-technically, you might get some geek cred points in certain communities. Not from me you understand, I quite enjoy the documentation you get with systemd that lets me control a lot more than I used to with init scripts, although I dare say I could have fiddled around with those scripts to my hearts content; it was just that having an interface that lets me switch in and out various units I find a lot more inviting.
 
Still, someone should make their own distro branched off from Devuan that uses it.
 
Is it possible to just install sysvinit in Debian, and use it without uninstalling or changing anything else? I want to use it on the Pyra, but I don't want to go as far as changing the OS. Unless Devuan is easy to install, and maintains package parity with PyraOS.
 
Not as I understand it; the devuan team have had to patch a number of other components from the upstream debian to make them work with the old System V init system. Other than those, it does maintain parity with the upstream debian though, but whether the pyra specific packages will work with sysvinit is left as an exercise for the system administrator (I can't see why many apps or games would break, but things like the first use daemon would probably need a shake).
 
That link makes it sound like only udisks2 and polkit need to be kicked to shake it off systemd, while wikipedia made it sound like there was more, but that may just be my reading of it.

I think it says removing it is optional because if it's not invoked as pid 1 it'll just sit there as binaries on your disc not doing anything.

FWIW on my Arch boxes, systemd is depended on by: colord dhcpcd libinput libpulse libwacom mkinitcpio netctl pcmciautils polkit rtkit and systemd-sysvcompat. I guess most of those are small utils that can be duplicated in the sysvinit packages, and obviously you won't need systemd-sysvcompat. I don't have udisks2 installed at all fwiw.
 
It sounds like it might be too much work to make the Pyra use it though. I guess I'll see when I get mine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

sebt3
a journey with the pyra
Replies
2
Views
5K
Magic Sam
Magic Sam
Wally
  • Locked
  • Sticky
FAQ - DragonBox Pyra
Replies
1
Views
17K
Wally
Wally
Back
Top