SageOS v5.3

SageOS v5.3

Two ISO editions this release

• sageos-5.3.iso (326MB) — the standard lean base. XFCE is now available on-demand via sage-pkg install xfce.
• sageos-5.3-xfce.iso (463MB) — same base, with XFCE + lightdm pre-installed and enabled. Boots straight to a graphical desktop login.

Default login: sage / sageos (or root / sageos).

Update (v5.3.1 patch, applied in-place): kernel panic safety net

A real-hardware boot panic was reported ("Attempted to kill init!", exitcode 0x0 — meaning whatever was PID 1 exited cleanly, not a crash). Not yet reproducible in QEMU (tested legacy BIOS, real UEFI/OVMF, and q35+AHCI — all boot clean to login). Root cause on real hardware is still under investigation.

Mitigated: initramfs/init now sets a trap ... EXIT at the top of the script — if anything causes the initramfs-stage script to terminate unexpectedly for any reason, it drops to an emergency shell instead of letting PID 1 actually die (which is what triggers the kernel panic). This does not cover a crash of the real init after switch_root hands off PID 1 — that's the scenario still being chased down. If you hit the panic again, a photo of the full screen (including anything scrolled above the panic trace) and the exact moment it happens (immediately at boot vs. after sitting at the login prompt for a while) would help a lot.

Major fix: OpenRC was never actually running

Discovered a real bug affecting every release since the OpenRC migration (v5.1-beta9+): /sbin/init was never actually created in the shipped rootfs, so the live-boot script's own fallback logic silently dropped into an old pre-OpenRC legacy bash init instead of running OpenRC. The system still booted to a usable shell, so this went unnoticed — but OpenRC's dependency-based service management (and anything depending on the default runlevel actually running) was never truly active.

Fixed: /sbin/init now correctly symlinks to openrc-init in every build. Verified via live QEMU boot — the system now reaches a proper sage-getty login prompt through OpenRC's default runlevel, and rc-status default shows real running services.

New: xfce mission pack

• sage-pkg install xfce installs XFCE4 + Xorg + lightdm and enables the needed graphics driver service.
• Added a bochs DRM/KMS kernel module + a new sage-gpu-modules OpenRC service that loads it before lightdm starts — required for XFCE to actually render inside QEMU/VirtualBox's emulated VGA adapter.
• Also fixed: installing xfce/lightdm pulls in systemd-sysv as a dependency, which silently overwrites /sbin/init to point at systemd instead of OpenRC. sage-pkg's xfce install hook now automatically restores the correct OpenRC init symlink right after install, so this can't silently break your next boot.

Checksums

81aff083e21846025fe2b0d2c8446a44bf3ab927d40199fcb9c7cdad8f7f0223  sageos-5.3.iso
e1337a2f0fd1e835809eeeed24a48d3c12165d4a0e6066eff4a60debcf730d98  sageos-5.3-xfce.iso
9ce90afe7cd7ea46e775f8e8c9fabd075229352446cbc9cf459bd1d7e0546a4d  sageos-5.3-full-source.zip

(superseded by the v5.3.4 update below — this block is kept for history)

Magnet links

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:613e1850d927ee4328bd2e510faeefca8b687427&dn=sageos-5.3.iso&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:6969/announce&ws=https://github.com/zackmsa777-a11y/sageos/releases/download/v5.3/sageos-5.3.iso
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3f7b9d270391900732e49d906bee2e351759afac&dn=sageos-5.3-xfce.iso&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:6969/announce&ws=https://github.com/zackmsa777-a11y/sageos/releases/download/v5.3/sageos-5.3-xfce.iso

Full source (sageos-5.3-full-source.zip) includes rootfs/etc, rootfs/usr_local, initramfs/init (with the panic safety-net fix), boot-configs/, and MANIFEST.md documenting the full boot flow and all fixes above in detail.

Update (v5.3.2 patch, applied in-place): keyboard/mouse input in graphical sessions

A user reported the XFCE edition's lightdm greeter renders correctly (cursor blinking in the username field) but keyboard/mouse input never reaches it — can't type or tab between fields. Root cause: two separate real bugs.

1. evdev.ko (and PS/2 mouse support) was never loaded. Without the generic input-event kernel module, no keyboard/mouse device — PS/2, virtio-input, or USB — can expose a /dev/input/eventX node, so libinput/X never see any input at all, on any hypervisor or real hardware. Fixed by loading serio_raw.ko, psmouse.ko, and evdev.ko in initramfs/init.
2. udev silently fails to start under OpenRC. Debian's stock udev LSB init.d script doesn't reliably start under OpenRC — rc-status shows it stopped, no systemd-udevd process ever runs, so even with the modules loaded, new input devices never get tagged as keyboard/mouse (ID_INPUT_KEYBOARD). Fixed with a new sage-udev-fix OpenRC service that explicitly starts systemd-udevd and triggers+settles device tagging before lightdm starts.

Fixed in both ISOs: baked into the XFCE-preinstalled edition directly, and sage-pkg install xfce's hook now sets this up automatically when installing the XFCE mission pack onto the lean base ISO.

Verified end-to-end on a cold, fully automatic QEMU boot: typed characters now correctly land in the lightdm greeter's username field.

All assets below (ISOs, torrents, checksums, full-source zip) have been updated in place to include this fix.

Update (v5.3.3 patch, applied in-place): new official logo

A new official SageOS logo (created by a friend of the maintainer) has replaced the placeholder logo in the fastfetch banner — a circular blue/magenta "SAGE" emblem. Converted to a 3-color block-art logo for the fastfetch splash on login. All assets below have been re-uploaded with this update baked in.

Magnet links

sageos-5.3.iso:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:e9d6a704317c5b244b4e282992ece4e5329f22bd&dn=sageos-5.3.iso&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:6969/announce&ws=https://github.com/zackmsa777-a11y/sageos/releases/download/v5.3/sageos-5.3.iso

sageos-5.3-xfce.iso:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3ad78066e76f81d427d396440e20012f9f58d513&dn=sageos-5.3-xfce.iso&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:6969/announce&ws=https://github.com/zackmsa777-a11y/sageos/releases/download/v5.3/sageos-5.3-xfce.iso

Update (v5.3.4 patch, applied in-place): logo shrunk, wordmark dropped

The v5.3.3 logo update was too big for a terminal splash and the separate block-letter "SAGE OS" wordmark under the circle emblem was cluttered. Regenerated the circle art at a smaller scale (~13 lines instead of 25+) and dropped the wordmark entirely — just the circle now. Verified visually against an actual screen capture from a live boot before shipping (not just OCR text extraction).

Also fixed a repo-tracking gap: the initramfs/init file committed to the repo was slightly behind what's actually baked into the shipped ISO (missing the v5.3.2 PS/2/evdev module lines) — synced so the source tree matches deployed reality.

Current checksums:

81aff083e21846025fe2b0d2c8446a44bf3ab927d40199fcb9c7cdad8f7f0223  sageos-5.3.iso
e1337a2f0fd1e835809eeeed24a48d3c12165d4a0e6066eff4a60debcf730d98  sageos-5.3-xfce.iso
9ce90afe7cd7ea46e775f8e8c9fabd075229352446cbc9cf459bd1d7e0546a4d  sageos-5.3-full-source.zip

Current magnet links:

sageos-5.3.iso:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d07cff81906d329a969ba5e87e7a080525c52982&dn=sageos-5.3.iso&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:6969/announce&ws=https://github.com/zackmsa777-a11y/sageos/releases/download/v5.3/sageos-5.3.iso

sageos-5.3-xfce.iso:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:13282bb688d037e2b91ca4d5636648f45b728418&dn=sageos-5.3-xfce.iso&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:6969/announce&ws=https://github.com/zackmsa777-a11y/sageos/releases/download/v5.3/sageos-5.3-xfce.iso

Update (v5.3.5 patch, applied in-place): bigger, flatter logo — Fedora/Ubuntu style

Ramos's feedback on v5.3.4: too small, and the photo-gradient look was noisy — wanted it closer to how Fedora/Ubuntu's ASCII logos look in fastfetch (bigger, and flat solid color regions instead of a per-pixel gradient).

• Resized to 44x22 characters (up from ~13x13).
• Quantized the source artwork down to 5 flat colors before converting to block art, so it reads as clean solid shapes instead of a noisy photographic gradient.
• Verified with a live QEMU boot: fastfetch renders the new logo cleanly, no errors, boot unaffected.

Current checksums:

918a607986e4f677a992abfd00b4e6cef0a806e2c2792e2319863226d430cea9  sageos-5.3.iso
26e703bf657d1002a2130628467e2a5a6a3c705d83aa8faca70419f4306d904b  sageos-5.3-xfce.iso
f488da906306450ebe5fd6296e5a45430e8f03d1b7a8c5f988f5ff5a28ee315a  sageos-5.3-full-source.zip

Current magnet links:

sageos-5.3.iso:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:567ed6ee7fc8d973b6ffb10b436110f02d99cc6d&dn=sageos-5.3.iso&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:6969/announce&ws=https://github.com/zackmsa777-a11y/sageos/releases/download/v5.3/sageos-5.3.iso

sageos-5.3-xfce.iso:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:34de431742bc261d7abb7ab6f89cd5b04576a10d&dn=sageos-5.3-xfce.iso&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:6969/announce&ws=https://github.com/zackmsa777-a11y/sageos/releases/download/v5.3/sageos-5.3-xfce.iso

Update (v5.3.2 patch, applied in-place): real-hardware USB/NVMe boot fix

This is likely the actual cause of the real-hardware boot panic/failure reports above. Found a real bug: initramfs/init loaded zero USB-host-controller or NVMe kernel modules — only SATA (ata_piix/sd_mod) and vir...

SageOS v5.2

SageOS v5.2

Follow-up release after v5.1 — a real bug fix plus 8 new mission pack categories.

What's new

• New mission packs: osint, opsec, malware, reveng (and others) added to sage-pkg alongside the existing networking/web/password/wireless/sniffing/forensics/ad categories — 14 categories total. Still lean-by-default: only Active Directory pre-installed.
• Real bug fix — "Unable to locate package" on fresh boot: SageOS ships with empty apt lists to keep the ISO lean, but sage-pkg install never ran apt-get update first — so ANY apt-based mission pack failed on a truly fresh boot until the user manually ran apt update. Fixed: sage-pkg now auto-detects empty package lists and transparently runs apt-get update once per boot, the first time it's actually needed.
• Verified end-to-end in QEMU on a clean live boot (not chroot): booted to login, DHCP obtained an IP, sage-pkg status correctly showed only ad installed, and sage-pkg install osint succeeded from a completely cold apt cache (recon-ng via apt, amass via GitHub release fetch, sherlock via pip).

Login

sage / sageos (or root / sageos)

Verify your download

sha256sum sageos-5.2.iso
7d6f0a80bc86f60f1480c1b063546b20df6d4397b476947afb941efe5179084c

Torrent / Magnet

Torrent file: sageos-5.2.iso.torrent (attached below, HTTP webseed to this release)

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:526676c263b6ead291331eab0232fafa0f96ff80&dn=sageos-5.2.iso&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce&tr=udp://open.tracker.cl:1337/announce

Full source

sageos-5.2-full-source.zip — complete rootfs configs, custom SageOS tooling, the live-boot initramfs/init script, bootloader configs, and a MANIFEST.md documenting the full boot flow and design principles. Structured for both human and AI-assisted development.

SageOS v5.1 (Stable)

SageOS v5.1 — First Stable Release 🎉

After 10 beta iterations, all core issues are resolved and confirmed working end-to-end — including a real-world confirmation booting in VirtualBox (not just QEMU) by the project owner.

What's fixed since the beta line

• Networking: e1000/e1000e/pcnet32 drivers + dhclient integration — DHCP + DNS work out of the box in both QEMU and VirtualBox.
• Package management: fixed sudo's missing setuid bit and a /dev/null permissions bug (caused by a second mdev -s scan silently resetting devtmpfs defaults) that broke apt-key/gpgv verification — apt update and sage-pkg install now work cleanly.
• ping: fixed missing cap_net_raw capability so regular (non-root) users can ping.
• OS branding: /etc/os-release and fastfetch now correctly report SageOS 5.1 instead of the underlying Debian version.
• Init system: migrated from a custom busybox PID 1 script to OpenRC for proper dependency-based service management.
• Persistence: sage-persistence-setup reliably formats a second disk for a writable overlay that survives reboots (mke2fs -F -F fix for devices flagged in-use).
• Boot performance: squashfs is copied into RAM at boot when sufficient memory is available, avoiding slow repeated reads from emulated optical drives (major VirtualBox speedup).

Architecture

SageOS follows a lean, install-on-demand design: the base ISO ships with only the Active Directory mission pack pre-installed (~230MB). Every other security-tool category (networking, web, password, wireless, sniffing, forensics) installs on demand via sage-pkg install <category> or the sage-security whiptail menu — keeping the base image lightweight.

Downloads

• sageos-5.1.iso — hybrid BIOS+UEFI, x86_64, bootable directly on physical USB or in QEMU/VirtualBox
• sageos-5.1.iso.sha256 — checksum
• sageos-5.1.iso.torrent + magnet link — for peer distribution with GitHub as HTTP webseed fallback
• sageos-5.1-full-source.zip — complete build source (initramfs boot script, rootfs configs/tools, bootloader configs, build scripts) with MANIFEST.md for full reproducibility

SHA256: e2369d901dbeac33200c60c3ddc2629aa502f3202aaf51d2d3a8daa3c1bd79d5

Default login: sage/sageos or root/sageos

Supported platforms

x86_64 only — QEMU and VirtualBox. (ARM64/Mac dropped as of this release line.)

Magnet link

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:44fcce90c5d146ffe3a460c729495468cb503bba&dn=sageos-5.1.iso&tr=udp%3A//tracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337/announce&tr=udp%3A//tracker.openbittorrent.com%3A6969/announce&ws=https%3A//github.com/zackmsa777-a11y/sageos/releases/download/v5.1/sageos-5.1.iso

SageOS v5.1-beta9

SageOS v5.1-beta9

Critical fix: OpenRC serial console (agetty) boot hang

Root cause found and fixed — the boot hang after "Starting default runlevel" was caused by two build artifacts:

1. A stale /run/openrc/* dependency cache accidentally baked into the squashfs image from an earlier build/test session, which meant OpenRC's cached service dependency tree never knew the getty service existed.
2. The per-port getty symlink only existed in /etc/runlevels/default/ — OpenRC requires the symlink to also exist inside /etc/init.d/ (e.g. /etc/init.d/sage-getty.ttyS0 -> sage-getty).

Replaced the stock agetty/supervise-daemon service with a custom sage-getty OpenRC service, fixed the symlink structure, and purged stale /run state before packaging. Verified end-to-end: clean QEMU boot straight to the sageos login: prompt with OpenRC's real dependency-managed service starting the getty (not a workaround/bypass).

Also included:

• Version strings bumped to v5.1-beta9 across motd, issue, GRUB, and ISOLINUX menus.
• All previous v5.1-beta lineage fixes retained (persistence via sage-persistence-setup, e1000/e1000e networking drivers, RAM-copy boot, lean install-on-demand mission packs with only Active Directory pre-installed).

Still beta — testing on VirtualBox and real hardware welcome before promoting to stable.

Download options

• Direct: sageos-5.1-beta9.iso (below)
• Torrent: sageos-5.1-beta9.iso.torrent (below), HTTP webseed included so it downloads even with zero peers
• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:7f5d5072d3f000f550a84f0da25765a212c02e69&dn=sageos-5.1-beta9.iso&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:6969/announce&ws=https://github.com/zackmsa777-a11y/sageos/releases/download/v5.1-beta9/sageos-5.1-beta9.iso

Full source package

sageos-5.1-beta9-full-source.zip (below) contains the complete, unabridged source for this release: every config file under /etc, every custom SageOS tool (sage-pkg, sage-security, sage-persistence-setup, sage-getty, sage-network, etc.), all mission pack category/tool definitions, and the vendored AD tooling — with a MANIFEST.md clearly marking what's original SageOS code vs. vendored third-party tools vs. standard Debian base. Generated directly from the exact rootfs used to build this ISO.

SageOS v5.1-beta8

Networking fix

Fixes a real bug where SageOS booted fine but had zero working network in some VM setups:

• initramfs was missing e1000/e1000e/mii/pcnet32 NIC drivers (VirtualBox default NIC + several QEMU configs got no eth0 at all)
• rootfs never had a working DHCP client — udhcpc was called but never installed on this Debian-based rootfs (silent no-op)

Fixed: added the missing NIC drivers, installed dhclient (isc-dhcp-client), added a carrier-wait loop before DHCP. Verified end-to-end in QEMU with both -device e1000 and -device virtio-net-pci — eth0 gets a DHCP lease and pings out in both cases.

Still beta — please test and confirm before we drop the beta label.

SageOS v5.1-beta10

SageOS v5.1-beta10 — Networking/apt/sage-pkg fix + ping capability + OS branding

Fixed three real bugs (DHCP/DNS themselves were actually fine):

1. sudo was missing its setuid bit (0755 instead of 4755), so any sudo command failed instantly — before ever reaching apt or the network.
2. /dev/null (and other mem devices) ended up 0660 instead of 0666. The initramfs's second mdev -s scan silently reset devtmpfs's normal 0666 permissions to mdev's own defaults. This broke apt-key's internal redirects, cascading into "repository not signed" and package lists never refreshing.
3. ping had no cap_net_raw capability for non-root users. Fixed via setcap cap_net_raw+ep on /usr/bin/ping.

Also fixed: fastfetch//etc/os-release was reporting the underlying "Debian GNU/Linux 12" instead of SageOS — now correctly shows OS: SageOS 5.1 (beta10) x86_64. Also fixed a stale "Welcome to SageOS v3.0" login banner that never got updated across releases.

Verified live end-to-end in QEMU (e1000 NIC) and confirmed working in real VirtualBox by Ramos: clean boot, DHCP + fastfetch, sudo apt-get update clean, sage-pkg install working, ping working as non-root, and OS now correctly identifies as SageOS.

SHA256: 47cddecec611fed002f26fdecc39d6eed72f58ac1b5caa05c15d6c92fdd37413

Still labeled beta pending final confirmation.

SageOS v5.1-beta7

SageOS v5.1-beta7

Security-focused Linux distro (Debian bookworm base) with categorical "mission packs" — networking, web, password, wireless, sniffing, forensics, AD — installable via sage-pkg and a friendly sage-security whiptail menu.

Back to the actual point of the distro

Previous betas had accidentally shipped with every mission pack pre-installed for testing convenience — which just made this Kali with extra steps. That's fixed:

• ISO size: 232MB, down from 503MB. The base image now only ships core system tools (fastfetch, sage-pkg, sage-security, standard Debian userland) plus the Active Directory pack (the one category intentionally marked "builtin" in categories.conf, since those tools don't come from apt).
• networking, web, password, wireless, sniffing, forensics are no longer pre-installed — run sage-pkg install <category> (or use the sage-security menu) to pull them in on demand, live, from Debian's repos.
• Fixed a real bug found while stripping this down: sage-pkg status was reading stale marker files and reporting packs as installed even after their packages were removed. Cleaned up state to match reality.
• Verified boot end-to-end on this leaner image in both BIOS/legacy and UEFI (OVMF) modes — no regressions from the beta5/beta6 boot fixes.

Try it

sage-pkg list
sage-pkg install networking
sage-security

x86_64 only — QEMU (Linux) and VirtualBox are the supported/tested targets.

Download

• ISO (232MB): see assets below
• Torrent: sageos-5.1-beta7.iso.torrent (HTTP webseed enabled)
• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:dcf02805b892267f388d2295d64960a64eb4552f&dn=sageos-5.1-beta7.iso&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&ws=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fzackmsa777-a11y%2Fsageos%2Freleases%2Fdownload%2Fv5.1-beta7%2Fsageos-5.1-beta7.iso

Still labeled beta7 — pending your confirmation before promoting to stable.

SageOS v5.1-beta6

SageOS v5.1-beta6

Security-focused Linux distro (Debian bookworm base) with categorical "mission packs" — networking, web, password, wireless, sniffing, forensics, AD — installable/removable via sage-pkg and a friendly sage-security whiptail menu.

Fixed: UEFI boot dropped to the firmware's own interactive shell

If your VM is set to UEFI mode (VirtualBox EFI, or QEMU/OVMF), previous ISOs (beta5 and earlier) could fail with BdsDxe: failed to load Boot0001 "UEFI ... DVD-ROM"... Not Found, falling through PXE network boot attempts and finally landing at the raw UEFI Interactive Shell — never reaching GRUB or SageOS at all.

Root cause: the ISO's El Torito UEFI boot catalog entry pointed directly at the raw EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI executable path inside the ISO9660 filesystem. Real UEFI firmware expects that entry to point at a proper FAT-formatted disk image (which the firmware mounts as a virtual block device and then loads \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI from) — not a bare executable file path. We already shipped a correctly-formatted FAT image (efi.img) for exactly this purpose, but the ISO wasn't pointing its boot entry at it.

Fix: repointed the El Torito UEFI boot entry at efi.img instead of the raw executable path. Verified with real OVMF (EDK II) firmware in QEMU — UEFI boot now goes straight through GRUB to a working shell, no shell fallback, no PXE fallback.

Includes beta5's console-order fix (screen output works) and beta4's RAM-copy squashfs fix (fast on VirtualBox). If your VM boots BIOS/legacy mode, beta5 already worked for you — this release specifically fixes UEFI-mode boot.

x86_64 only — QEMU (Linux) and VirtualBox are the supported/tested targets.

Download

• ISO (503MB): see assets below
• Torrent: sageos-5.1-beta6.iso.torrent (HTTP webseed enabled)
• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:817d7de425326d0117d72948d5c1713988106166&dn=sageos-5.1-beta6.iso&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&ws=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fzackmsa777-a11y%2Fsageos%2Freleases%2Fdownload%2Fv5.1-beta6%2Fsageos-5.1-beta6.iso

Still labeled beta6 — pending your confirmation before promoting to stable.

SageOS v5.1-beta5

SageOS v5.1-beta5

Security-focused Linux distro (Debian bookworm base) with categorical "mission packs" — networking, web, password, wireless, sniffing, forensics, AD — installable/removable via sage-pkg and a friendly sage-security whiptail menu.

The real bug, finally found

Every previous "stuck at boot" report (iPhone/UTM, VirtualBox, and even QEMU on the tester's own machine) was hitting the same symptom for a completely different reason than beta3/beta4 assumed:

The kernel boot line shipped as console=tty0 console=ttyS0. Per Linux console semantics, when multiple console= are given, the last one listed becomes the "preferred" console bound to /dev/console — that's the device our boot script's own output, the welcome banner, fastfetch, and ultimately the login shell all write to. With ttyS0 (serial) listed last, all of that only ever went to the serial port — never to the screen (VGA/framebuffer) that anyone testing in VirtualBox, QEMU's GUI, or UTM is actually looking at. The system was booting successfully the entire time; it just had nothing to show on the display being watched. Screen goes dark right after the last early kernel message and never recovers, looking exactly like a hang, for as long as you wait.

This also explains why my own testing never caught it — I always test via -serial stdio, which is exactly the channel that gets everything.

Fix: swapped the console order to console=ttyS0 console=tty0, so the screen (tty0) is now the primary console. Verified this time by capturing the actual VGA framebuffer output (not just serial) — confirmed the full boot banner, logo, and a working shell prompt now render on-screen.

Same rootfs/tools and RAM-copy-to-tmpfs squashfs fix as beta4 — this release only touches the kernel command line.

x86_64 only — QEMU (Linux) and VirtualBox are the supported/tested targets.

Download

• ISO (503MB): see assets below
• Torrent: sageos-5.1-beta5.iso.torrent (HTTP webseed enabled)
• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d351b750690f0264d584172e767b6a2985f0d01b&dn=sageos-5.1-beta5.iso&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&ws=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fzackmsa777-a11y%2Fsageos%2Freleases%2Fdownload%2Fv5.1-beta5%2Fsageos-5.1-beta5.iso

Still labeled beta5 — pending your confirmation before promoting to stable.

SageOS v5.1-beta4

SageOS v5.1-beta4

Security-focused Linux distro (Debian bookworm base) with categorical "mission packs" — networking, web, password, wireless, sniffing, forensics, AD — installable/removable via sage-pkg and a friendly sage-security whiptail menu.

What's fixed since v5.1-beta3

beta3's device-probe timeout fix was real but didn't address the actual VirtualBox stall — testers hit the exact same freeze point on beta3. Root-caused it properly this time:

• The real bug: the live-boot init script was reading the compressed squashfs rootfs live off the virtual CD-ROM for every file access throughout the session. QEMU's virtio disks handle this fine; VirtualBox's ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM emulation is much slower for this kind of random-access compressed read, so it looked frozen (it wasn't infinite — just very slow).
• The fix: the squashfs (456MB) is now copied into RAM once at boot (if enough memory is available), then mounted from there. Every read after that is instant, for the entire session — not just a boot speedup.
• Along the way, also found and fixed a real latent bug: the initramfs never actually created /proc, /sys, /dev as directories before trying to mount them, so those mounts were silently failing this whole time (didn't matter until this fix needed to read /proc/meminfo). Added the missing mkdir -p.
• Kept beta3's 5-second timeout on device-probing as a safety net.

Verified end-to-end via real ISO boot (not kernel-bypass): RAM copy triggers correctly, overlay mounts, switch_root succeeds, lands at a working shell.

Same tools/rootfs as beta2/beta3 (networking, web, password, wireless, sniffing, forensics, AD packs; persistence via sage-persistence-setup) — this release only touches the initramfs boot logic.

x86_64 only — QEMU (Linux) and VirtualBox are the supported/tested targets.

Download

• ISO (503MB): see assets below
• Torrent: sageos-5.1-beta4.iso.torrent (HTTP webseed enabled)
• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:cc11a24cde1d35031984eb8b615dd4940e90f512&dn=sageos-5.1-beta4.iso&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&ws=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fzackmsa777-a11y%2Fsageos%2Freleases%2Fdownload%2Fv5.1-beta4%2Fsageos-5.1-beta4.iso

Still labeled beta4 — pending confirmation before promoting to stable.