Re: ISO image available for testing!

[Christopher Baines]

Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Hi Chris,
>
> Christopher Baines <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> I've attempted to use this to install GuixSD on a Bytemark
>> VM. Unfortunately I haven't succeeded yet. I managed to get as far as
>> running guix system init, but when I did, it started downloading the
>> bootstrap binaries, and then building binutils.
>>
>> When I run guix system build, or guix build with the --dry-run options,
>> it says that it will download, rather than building, but it doesn't.
>
> It turned out to be issues related to grafts and to what Hydra builds,
> fixed with these commits:
>
> 3e442f85f * gnu: ghostscript-with-cups: Turn into a public variable.
> 91c9b5d01 * packages: 'package-grafts' trims native inputs.
> ff0e0041f * packages: 'fold-bag-dependencies' honors nativeness in recursive 
> calls.
> f00b85ff8 * gnu: commencement: Do not graft early bootstrap packages.
>
> The Binutils issue is fixed by f00b85ff8.
>
> Commit 91c9b5d01 notably fixes the “expat issue”: coreutils had expat in
> its dependency graph, via gettext.  Thus, the expat graft was picked up
> as a candidate graft.  However, expat itself was subject to the glibc
> graft, and since there was no substitute for this particular expat, we’d
> have to build it first, just to throw it away later on because coreutils
> does not refer to it at run time.
>
> Long story short: we were flagging native inputs as potential sources of
> grafts even though, by definition, native inputs are not referred to at
> run time.
>
> The last commit ensures that Hydra builds the replacement for
> ‘ghostscript-with-cups’.
>
> What’s tricky is that one doesn’t notice these issues unless starting
> from a fresh store.
>
> I’ve uploaded an updated ISO image, which I used to test substitute
> availability and grafts.  If you have time in the coming hours, feedback
> welcome:

Thanks for fixing this Ludo, and congratulations on the release. I'm
glad to say that I've now managed to install GuixSD using the 0.14.0
x86_64 ISO, however I did encounter some difficulties.

I tried a few times with both the ISO you replied with here, and the
released ISO, but each time the virtual machine I was installing on to
appeared to restart while guix system init was running. It's difficult
to get more information, but the last messages I got out of guix system
init relate to grafting and collisions.

This evening when I tried again I passed --no-grafts to guix system
init, and this time it successfully finished the
installation. Interestingly, this is also what is actually tested by the
iso-image-installer system test, as it sets the GUIX_BUILD_OPTIONS
environment variable.

This isn't conclusive, but I'd be very interested to hear from anyone
that has had similar issues, or successes in using the ISO installer,
both with and without the --no-grafts option.

Thanks again,

Chris

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature