bug#22274: GuixSD resets hardware clock (on Lenovo x200 with libreboot)

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Christopher Allan Webber <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> My config is attached.  Hackily, I copy-pasta'ed the kernel packages
>> entirely from guix v0.9.0's release.  I can confirm that this can read
>> the hardware clock just fine, whereas the other version of the kernel
>> can't... so it does indeed look like between Linux-Libre 4.2.5 and
>> Linux-Libre 4.3.3 we have some sort of regression that leads to this
>> problem on x200 Minifree Libreboot-enabled laptops, at least.
>
> Great, thanks for narrowing it down.
>
> Given that, I think it would be useful to keep a copy of 4.2.5 in Guix
> itself.  Would you like to provide a patch for that, preferably using
> ‘(inherit linux-libre)’ rather than copying the whole recipe?
>
> Ludo’.

Yes, I will work on this.

Also I'm happy to report that I did a fairly thorough testing and
guarantee that this really is the source of the hardware clock reading
error, and it is.  I checked both kernel versions about 10 times and
found consistent behavior.

I'm not sure why something in my GuixSD system sometimes sets the
hardware clock and sometimes doesn't yet, though.  But that's not as big
of a concern or me.

Anyway, on to do that packaging!