Bunsenlabs Devuan

Wasp · 2026-03-27 13:53:54

Preferring Devuan to Debian and a different init system, I installed the Devuan Excalibur iso and then the Bunsenlabs netinstall script. Everything works, except bl-exit which is linked to systemd; To overcome this, I created a small script with gMessage. And this is the result...

Last edited by Wasp (2026-03-27 14:13:04)

greenjeans · 2026-03-27 15:35:06

Very very nice!! And I like that you made your own script for shutdown, that looks great!

I wonder though for a drop-in solution to shutdown, if Obsession would work?

Wasp · 2026-03-27 15:54:05

greenjeans wrote:

Very very nice!! And I like that you made your own script for shutdown, that looks great!
I wonder though for a drop-in solution to shutdown, if Obsession would work?

Thank's
I don't know if oblogout works only with systemd...

greenjeans · 2026-03-27 17:00:43

I'm running Devuan-based Openbox, and Obsession works great, at least in daedalus/bookworm. It's an older program, but very simple and hardy.

Wasp · 2026-03-27 17:09:01

greenjeans wrote:

I'm running Devuan-based Openbox, and Obsession works great, at least in daedalus/bookworm. It's an older program, but very simple and hardy.

Ah grazie della informazione, non conoscevo obsession...

DeepDayze · 2026-03-27 18:34:19

Looking very nice and I'm sure that down the road bl-exit be made more compatible with other inits including Sysv and most likely involve making some changes under the hood to accommodate the ways to end session/logout or reboot.

I might play with devuan-based BL myself on a test system. Is your logout/shutdown/reboot script on a repo somewhere?

Welcome to the BL Forums btw!

Last edited by DeepDayze (2026-03-27 18:37:13)

Wasp · 2026-03-27 19:36:06

DeepDayze wrote:

Looking very nice and I'm sure that down the road bl-exit be made more compatible with other inits including Sysv and most likely involve making some changes under the hood to accommodate the ways to end session/logout or reboot.
I might play with devuan-based BL myself on a test system. Is your logout/shutdown/reboot script on a repo somewhere?
Welcome to the BL Forums btw!

Thank's, it's a simple script in bash, I love simplicity...

#!/bin/bash

gmessage "Chiudere OpenBox ?                                   " -center -title "ESCI" -default "Cancella" -buttons "Cancella":1,"Esci":2,"Sospendi":3,"Riavvia":4,"Spegni":5 >/dev/null

case $? in
1)
echo "Esci" ;;
2)
openbox --exit ;;
3)
loginctl suspend ;;
4)
loginctl reboot ;;
5)
loginctl poweroff ;;
esac

Last edited by Wasp (2026-03-27 19:55:24)

Wasp · 2026-03-28 12:48:27

I'm correcting what I wrote: bl-exit works with Devuan and loginctl. A small change needs to be made to line 115 in the /usr/bin/bl-exit.conf file (the change is in bold):

[logout]='--button= Esci!system-log-out:bash -c "openbox --exit"'

Last edited by Wasp (2026-03-28 17:49:26)

johnraff · 2026-03-29 01:54:31

Hi Wasp, welcome to the forum, and thank you for this contribution!

Bl-exit was specifically written (by a forum member who does not use systemd) to be init-agnostic. That is, it should work OK without systemd.

Thank you for the suggestion to make logout work on Devuan (the file is /usr/bin/bl-exit), but I'm eager to learn why the original script does not work with "loginctl terminate-session $XDG_SESSION_ID", and fix it if necessary.

Maybe you need to install elogind to make it work?

Wasp · 2026-03-29 07:32:48

johnraff wrote:

Hi Wasp, welcome to the forum, and thank you for this contribution!
Bl-exit was specifically written (by a forum member who does not use systemd) to be init-agnostic. That is, it should work OK without systemd.
Thank you for the suggestion to make logout work on Devuan (the file is /usr/bin/bl-exit), but I'm eager to learn why the original script does not work with "loginctl terminate-session $XDG_SESSION_ID", and fix it if necessary.
Maybe you need to install elogind to make it work?

Hi and thanks
The command doesn't produce anything.

:~$ loginctl terminate-session $XDG_SESSION_ID
:~$

johnraff · 2026-03-29 07:40:24

Have you installed elogind?

...if so, what is the output of 'man loginctl'?

Last edited by johnraff (2026-03-29 07:43:11)

ceeslans · 2026-03-29 07:54:46

fwiw: running fluxbox on devuan 6 (excalibur) - with elogind duly installed, however "loginctl terminate-session $XDG_SESSION_ID" doesn't do anything.

to logout, I could use "fluxbox-remote exit" command (pretty much similar to @Wasp's openbox logout command).
but mostly using "pkill -KILL -u $USER" - which I believe is init-agnostic ?

Last edited by ceeslans (2026-03-29 08:06:37)

Wasp · 2026-03-29 07:58:35

johnraff wrote:

Have you installed elogind?
...if so, what is the output of 'man loginctl'?

it is installed...

LOGINCTL(1) loginctl LOGINCTL(1)
NAME
loginctl - Control the elogind login manager
SYNOPSIS
loginctl [OPTIONS...] {COMMAND} [NAME...]
/lib/elogind/system-shutdown
/lib/elogind/system-sleep
DESCRIPTION
loginctl may be used to introspect and control the state of the
elogind(8) login manager
COMMANDS
The following commands are understood:
Session Commands
list-sessions
Manual page loginctl(1) line 1 (press h for help or q to quit)...skipping...
LOGINCTL(1) loginctl LOGINCTL(1)
NAME
loginctl - Control the elogind login manager
SYNOPSIS
loginctl [OPTIONS...] {COMMAND} [NAME...]
/lib/elogind/system-shutdown
/lib/elogind/system-sleep
DESCRIPTION
loginctl may be used to introspect and control the state of the
elogind(8) login manager
COMMANDS
The following commands are understood:
Session Commands
list-sessions
List current sessions.
session-status [ID...]
Show terse runtime status information about one or more sessions,
followed by the most recent log data from the journal. Takes one or
more session identifiers as parameters. If no session identifiers
are passed, the status of the caller's session is shown. This
function is intended to generate human-readable output. If you are
looking for computer-parsable output, use show-session instead.
Added in version 233.
show-session [ID...]
Show properties of one or more sessions or the manager itself. If no
argument is specified, properties of the manager will be shown. If a
session ID is specified, properties of the session are shown.
Specially, if the given ID is "self", the session to which the
loginctl process belongs is used. If "auto", the current session is
used as with "self" if exists, and falls back to the current user's
graphical session. By default, empty properties are suppressed. Use
--all to show those too. To select specific properties to show, use
--property=. This command is intended to be used whenever

Last edited by Wasp (2026-03-29 08:00:33)

johnraff · Yesterday 02:55:06

^Thanks. It's difficult for me to debug this without a non-systemd system that uses elogind.
I found the manual online: https://manpages.debian.org/trixie/elog … .1.en.html

terminate-session ID... is there under Session Commands so why isn't "loginctl terminate-session $XDG_SESSION_ID" working? (Confirmed by ceeslans.) Could it be that with elogind that command needs root permissions, but not with systemd?

Another user had the same issue on the Artix Linux Forum: https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/ … 851.0.html
But man pages for elogind all claim that the loginctl command should work.

Wasp · Yesterday 09:34:15

johnraff wrote:

^Thanks. It's difficult for me to debug this without a non-systemd system that uses elogind.
I found the manual online: https://manpages.debian.org/trixie/elog … .1.en.html
terminate-session ID... is there under Session Commands so why isn't "loginctl terminate-session $XDG_SESSION_ID" working? (Confirmed by ceeslans.) Could it be that with elogind that command needs root permissions, but not with systemd?
Another user had the same issue on the Artix Linux Forum: https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/ … 851.0.html
But man pages for elogind all claim that the loginctl command should work.

Not even giving the command as root via sudo, nothing happens...

chroot · Yesterday 17:02:59

wrong thread

Last edited by chroot (Today 00:21:22)

DeepDayze · Yesterday 20:34:28

Love the theme and the icons @chroot!

johnraff · Today 02:17:26

Wasp wrote:

johnraff wrote:
...why isn't "loginctl terminate-session $XDG_SESSION_ID" working? Could it be that with elogind that command needs root permissions, but not with systemd?
Not even giving the command as root via sudo, nothing happens...

Thanks for confirming that.

You already have a solution that works well for your situation, so lets leave it there for now.

I would like to get bl-exit working on non-systemd systems - as it's supposed to - but it will probably need some time debugging on a devuan system. Later, I guess...

Wasp · Today 07:43:49

johnraff wrote:

Wasp wrote:
johnraff wrote:
...why isn't "loginctl terminate-session $XDG_SESSION_ID" working? Could it be that with elogind that command needs root permissions, but not with systemd?
Not even giving the command as root via sudo, nothing happens...
Thanks for confirming that.
You already have a solution that works well for your situation, so lets leave it there for now.
I would like to get bl-exit working on non-systemd systems - as it's supposed to - but it will probably need some time debugging on a devuan system. Later, I guess...

Thanks, the small change by inserting openbox --exit to the other command, it works perfectly...

PS I wrote this review for my blog, if it may interest you...
https://luddisti.noblogs.org/?p=435

greenjeans · Today 14:29:04

Wasp wrote:

PS I wrote this review for my blog, if it may interest you...
https://luddisti.noblogs.org/?p=435

Nice write-up, thanks! I was wondering how you proceeded. So basically do a net-install of the basic system, boot up into console and run the BL script?

I just don't like using the debian installer, takes sooo long on my old machine, I wonder if I couldn't just take an existing Devuan Mate install I have and add the new configs/script then re-boot into that and un-install the Mate session components? I know it sounds like the harder way, but I have used this de-construct/re-construct method for so long now that it's second nature and I can work very fast using it.

Pondering this...assuming success one could then roll up an iso with Refracta-Snapshot, then sharing that as a nice base to tinker with, @johnraff you mentioned needing such before you could effectively de-bug, would it be helpful if I or someone else made one?

#1 2026-03-27 13:53:54

Bunsenlabs Devuan

#2 2026-03-27 15:35:06

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#3 2026-03-27 15:54:05

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#4 2026-03-27 17:00:43

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#5 2026-03-27 17:09:01

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#6 2026-03-27 18:34:19

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#7 2026-03-27 19:36:06

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#8 2026-03-28 12:48:27

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#9 2026-03-29 01:54:31

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#10 2026-03-29 07:32:48

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#11 2026-03-29 07:40:24

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#12 2026-03-29 07:54:46

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#13 2026-03-29 07:58:35

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#14 Yesterday 02:55:06

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#15 Yesterday 09:34:15

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#16 Yesterday 17:02:59

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#17 Yesterday 20:34:28

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#18 Today 02:17:26

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#19 Today 07:43:49

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

#20 Today 14:29:04

Re: Bunsenlabs Devuan

Board footer