# Devuan 2.1 ASCII Release Notes

## Index

 - Introduction
 - What's new in this point-release
 - Getting Devuan 2.1 ASCII
 - Upgrading to Devuan 2.1 ASCII
 - Devuan Package Repositories
 - Change of "Origin" in Release and InRelease files
 - Non-free firmware
 - About eudev
 - Session management and policykit backends
 - Starting X from a terminal
 - Devuan package information pages
 - Reporting bugs


### Introduction

This document includes technical notes relevant to Devuan 2.1 ASCII.
More information and support on specific issues can be obtained by:

 - subscribing to the DNG mailing list:
      https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
 - visiting the Devuan user forum:
      https://dev1galaxy.org
 - shouting (but not too loud) on one of the Devuan IRC channels: 
       #devuan (freenode) - general discussion about Devuan
       #devuan-arm (freenode) - specific support for ARM 


### What's new in ASCII 2.1

Security udates:
 - apt (1.4.9) to fix CVE-2019-3462.
 - linux-image-4.9.0-9 (4.9.168-1+deb9u4) to fix multiple vulnerabilities
 - firefox-esr (60.8.0esr-1~deb9u1) to fix multiple vulnerabilities
 - policykit-1 to fix CVE-2018-19788 and CVE-2019-6133
 - Many more. (See https://www.debian.org/security/2019/)

Other changes:
 - dbus patch to generate new dbus machine-id on boot. This behavior 
   is configurable in /etc/default/dbus
 - memtest86+, lvm2 and mdadm added to live isos


### Getting Devuan 2.1 ASCII

Devuan 2.1 ASCII is available for i386, amd64, armel, armhf and arm64
platforms. Installers, live CDs, and images for virtual machines and
ARM SOCs can be downloaded at:

  http://files.devuan.org/devuan_ascii/

Please consider using one of the many mirrors, listed at:
 
  https://devuan.org/get-devuan
  
Detailed instructions on how to use each image are available in the
corresponding 'README.txt' file. The SHA256SUMS of each set of images
is signed by the developer in charge of the build. The fingerprints of
GPG keys of all Devuan developers are listed at:

  https://devuan.org/os/team

In order to check that the images you downloaded are genuine and not
corrupted, you should:

  - download the image(s)
  - download the corresponding SHA256SUMS and SHA256SUMS.asc files
    in the same folder
  - verify the checksums running:
    $ sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS
    (it could complain about missing files, but should show an "OK"
     close to the images you have actually downloaded)
  - verify the signature running:
    $ gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring ./devuan-devs.gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.asc
  
    (we assume that you have put the GPG keys in the keyring named 
     "devuan-devs.gpg". YMMV)

The 'devuan-devs.gpg' keyring is provided only for convenience. The
most correct procedure to verify that the signatures are authentic is
by downloading the relevant public keys from a trusted keyserver,
double-check that the fingerprint of the key matches that of the
developer reported on https://devuan.org/os/team and then use that key
for verification.

## Upgrading to Devuan 2.1 ASCII

Direct and easy upgrade paths from Devuan Jessie, Debian Jessie, and
Debian Stretch to Devuan 2.1 ASCII are available.

Upgrade from Devuan Jessie:

    https://devuan.org/os/documentation/dev1fanboy/upgrade-to-ascii

Migrate from Debian Jessie or Stretch:

    https://devuan.org/os/documentation/dev1fanboy/migrate-to-ascii

The following will be enough to upgrade if you are already using
Devuan ASCII Beta or Devuan ASCII RC:

    apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade


### Devuan Package Repositories

Thanks to the support of many volunteers and donors, Devuan has
recently put in place a network of package repository mirrors.  The
mirror network is accessible using the FQDN "deb.devuan.org" or
"{CC}.deb.devuan.org", where {CC} is a two-letter ISO 3166-1 country
code, such as "us" for the USA, "fr" for France, "mx" for Mexico, "nl"
for the Netherlands, and so on.

Starting from Devuan 2.0 ASCII, users should use exclusively
"deb.devuan.org" or ""{CC}.deb.devuan.org" in their 'sources.list'
file, e.g.:

	deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main
	deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main
	deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates main
	deb http://deb.devuan.org/devuan ascii-proposed main

Along with the above addresses, the repositories are also accessible
using the Tor network, by using our hidden service address:

	deb tor+http://devuanfwojg73k6r.onion/merged ascii main
	deb tor+http://devuanfwojg73k6r.onion/merged ascii-security main
	deb tor+http://devuanfwojg73k6r.onion/merged ascii-updates main
	deb tor+http://devuanfwojg73k6r.onion/devuan ascii-proposed main

All the mirrors contain the full Devuan package repository (all the
Devuan releases and all the suites). They are synced every 30 minutes
from the main Devuan package repository ("pkgmaster.devuan.org"), and
are continuously checked for sanity, integrity, and consistency. The
package repository network is currently accessed through a DNS
Round-Robin, but this will soon be changed into a series of
region-based redirects to improve bandwidth usage.

The updated list of mirrors belonging to the network is available at:

  http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/mirror_list.txt

Users could also opt for directly accessing one of the mirrors in that
list using the corresponding BaseURL.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The package mirrors at "deb.devuan.org" are signed
with the following GPG key:

	pub   rsa4096 2017-09-04 [SC] [expires: 2022-09-03]
	      E032601B7CA10BC3EA53FA81BB23C00C61FC752C
	uid  [ unknown] Devuan Repository (Amprolla3 on Nemesis 
	              <repository@devuan.org>)
	sub   rsa4096 2017-09-04 [E] [expires: 2022-09-03]

The key is included in the package "devuan-keyring". In order to use
deb.devuan.org, you must have `devuan-keyring_2017.10.03` or higher.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Devuan has planned to eventually discontinue the
original set of Devuan mirrors available at auto.mirror.devuan.org and
{CC}.mirror.devuan.org. As a consequence, users are strongly
encouraged to use the new set of mirrors at "deb.devuan.org" and
"{CC}.deb.devuan.org".


### Change of "Origin" in Release and InRelease files

Starting from May 31st 2018 the "Origin:" field of Release and
InRelease files served by deb.devuan.org is correctly set to
"Devuan". This solves several minor issues with `lsb` reporting
incorrect information about the OS and release. The change
should be seamless for Devuan Jessie and Devuan ASCII users.
 

### Non-free firmware

All Devuan 2.1 ASCII install media make non-free firmware packages
available at install time. In the majority of the cases, these
packages are needed (and will be installed) only if your wifi adapter
requires them. It is possible to avoid the automatic installation and
loading of needed non-free firmware by choosing the "Expert install"
option in the installation menu.

Devuan 2.1 ASCII desktop-live and minimal-live images come with
non-free firmware packages pre-installed. You have the option of
removing those non-free firmware packages from the desktop-live and
minimal-live after boot, using the "remove_firmware.sh" script
available under /root.
 

### About eudev

Following the inclusion of udev (a daemon in charge of device
management) in the systemd code tree, Devuan 2.1 ASCII provides the
alternative "eudev" package. The transition from udev to eudev is
managed through transitional packages, and should be automatic and
seamless.
 

### Session management and policykit backends

Devuan 2.1 ASCII provides a choice of 5 Desktop Environments at
install time (XFCE, Cinnamon, KDE, LXQT, MATE), while many other
window managers are available from the repositories.

These days, Desktop Environments rely on a session management system
to allow the user to perform several typical tasks without requiring
administrator privileges, including suspending/rebooting/shutting down
the system, mounting external devices, configuring networking, and so
on.

Two of such session management systems are available in Devuan 2.1
ASCII, namely:

  - consolekit
  - elogind

These session managers are mutually exclusive, only one of them can be
installed and active at a time to avoid unwanted interference.  In
order to grant processes in the unprivileged user session access to
select privileged operations, the installed session manager is
connected to the policykit-1 framework by a set of matching back-end
libraries.

Each of the 5 DEs available in Devuan comes with a recommended default
combination of login manager (either slim or lightdm) and session
management system:

  - XFCE: slim + consolekit
  - Cinnamon: lightdm + elogind
  - KDE: lightdm + elogind
  - LXQT: lightdm + elogind
  - MATE: slim + consolekit
  
In order for session management to work correctly, the login manager
(aka display manager, DM) has to register the user session with the
installed session manager (i.e. either consolekit or elogind), which
in turn has to cooperate with the relevant components of the desktop
environment. The default pairings listed above are known to work well
and do not require user intervention, but other combinations are
possible.


### Starting X from a console (TTY)

In Devuan 2.1 ASCII, the X server no longer requires to be run with
root privileges. As a consequence, there are some additional
requirements to be met when launching X directly from a TTY (i.e.,
through 'xinit' or 'startx'), especially on systems upgraded from
Devuan Jessie.

In Devuan 2.1 ASCII it is sufficient to install 'elogind' and
'libpam-elogind', and then use either 'startx' or 'xinit' as usual
from a regular user account. In this case, the Xorg log file will be
available under '~/.local/share/xorg/'.

The system still needs to support Kernel Mode Setting (KMS).
Therefore, this solution may not work in some virtualization
environments (e.g.  virtualbox) or if the kernel has no driver that
supports your graphic card.

Alternatively, it is still possible to run X with setuid root. In this
case, you need to install `xserver-xorg-legacy` and ensure that the
file '/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config' contains the (uncommented) line:

	needs_root_rights=yes


### Devuan package information pages

Devuan has recently set up a simple service to display information
about all the packages available in Devuan. The service can be
accessed at:

  https://pkginfo.devuan.org

It is possible to search for package names matching a set of keywords,
and to visualise the description, dependencies, suggestions and
recommendations of each package. Please report any issues with this
new service and/or get in touch if you have suggestions about how it
can be improved.


### Reporting bugs

No piece of software is perfect. And acknowledging this fact is the
first step towards improving our software base.

Devuan strongly believes in the cooperation of the community to find,
report, and solve issues. If you think you have found a bug in a
Devuan package, please report it to:

  https://bugs.devuan.org

The procedure to report bugs is quite simple: just install and run
`reportbug`, a tool that will help you compiling the bug report and
including any relevant information for the maintainers.

`reportbug` assumes than you have a properly configured Mail User
Agent that can send emails (and that it knows about). If this is not
the case, you can still prepare your bug report with `reportbug`, save
it (by default reportbug will save the report under /tmp), and then
use it as a template for an email to submit@bugs.devuan.org.

(NOTE: Devuan does not provide an open SMTP relay for `reportbug`
yet. If you don't know what this is about, you can safely ignore this
information).

When the bug report is processed, you will receive an email
confirmation indicating the number associated to the report.

Here you can check the status of your report:

  https://bugs.devuan.org/db/ix/full.html

Before reporting a bug, you might probably want to check whether the
very same problem has been already experienced and reported by other
users, e.g.  by checking the list of packages with known bugs:

  http://bugs.devuan.org/db/ix/packages.html

`reportbug` is a tool made by Debian for Debian, over a timespan of
about 25 years. This means that it is sometimes difficult to adapt it
to a new setup. We are currently working to improve the integration of
reportbug with the Devuan infrastructure, and to improve the
management, triaging, and reporting of bugs. Please bear with us ;^)


