# Devuan 3 Beowulf Release Notes

## Index

 - Introduction
 - What's new in this release
 - Getting Devuan 3 Beowulf
 - Upgrading to Devuan 3 Beowulf
 - Devuan Package Repositories
 - Non-free firmware
 - About eudev
 - Session management and policykit backends
 - About LXDE
 - Starting X from a terminal
 - Devuan package information pages
 - Reporting bugs


### Introduction

This document includes technical notes relevant to Devuan 3 Beowulf.
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 Beowulf

Changes in su
 - The behavior of su has changed. Use 'su -' to get root's path or use 
   the full path to commands if you use only 'su'. See the following for
   more information:
   https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/amd64/release-notes/ch-information.en.html#su-environment-variables
   https://wiki.debian.org/NewInBuster
   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=905564

Pulseaudio
 - If you have no sound, make sure the following line in
   /etc/pulse/client.conf.d/00-disable-autospawn.conf is commented as
   shown here:
   
   #autospawn=no

 - Note that firefox-esr no longer requires pulseaudio. You can easily
   remove pulseaudio and just use alsa.


### Getting Devuan 3 Beowulf

Devuan 3 Beowulf is available for i386, amd64, armel, armhf, arm64 and
ppc64el platforms. Installer isos and live CDs can be downloaded at:

  http://files.devuan.org/devuan_beowulf/

Please consider using one of the many mirrors, listed at:
 
  https://www.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://www.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://www.devuan.org/os/team and then use that
key for verification.

## Upgrading to Devuan 3 Beowulf

Direct and easy upgrade path from Devuan ASCII and migration path
from Debian Buster to Devuan 3 Beowulf are available here: 

https://www.devuan.org/os/install

If you are already on Beowulf, just run this command to get to the 
current release version:

    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". 

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

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

More information is available at:

  https://www.devuan.org/os/packages

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 accessed through a DNS Round-Robin.

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".


### Non-free firmware

All Devuan 3 Beowulf 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 3 Beowulf 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 3 Beowulf 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 3 Beowulf 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 post-install.

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

Two session management systems are available in Devuan Beowulf:

  - consolekit
  - logind (elogind and libpam-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.

The default session manager for all desktops is logind (libpam-elogind).  
XFCE and Cinnamon will work with either logind or consolekit. The other
desktop environments will only work with logind.

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 logind), which
in turn has to cooperate with the relevant components of the desktop
environment. 

Both slim and lightdm will work with either libpam-elogind or consolekit.
Slim is the default login manager for XFCE. Lightdm is the default for
the other desktops. 


### About LXDE

LXDE is not presented as a choice during installation but can be added 
after booting into the new system. Note that there is a bug in lxsession
that requires LXDE be installed without Recommends. (Debian bug #952679)

  apt --no-install-recommends install lxde


### Starting X from a console (TTY)

In Devuan 3 Beowulf, 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 3 Beowulf 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 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.

Before reporting a bug, please check whether the very same problem has 
been already experienced and reported by other users.

`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 ;^)