Re: Libreboot + WDE + GuixSD: Need some advice

[Stephen Sloan]

I used your find command and copied the grub.cfg file into place. It "just worked".  Cool indeed!  Practically speaking, I could copy the file into place every time that I reconfigure the system.  But for bragging rights, I've got to get it automated.  I'm reading through the code, looking for the best approach.  I'm a clojure programmer by trade; scheme is new to me.

I think I will try to make a package for flashrom and the libreboot utilities, but I like this solution of just copying a file into place.

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 8:21 AM, Marius Bakke <address@hidden> wrote:

Stephen Sloan <address@hidden> writes:

> I am looking for some advice.
>
> I'm am setting up a libreboot + whole disk encryption + guixsd laptop.
> Libreboot has grub in the BIOS, which allows for encrypting the whole disk.
>
> According to the libreboot docs, I can make the grub config available at
> /boot/grub/libreboot_grub.cfg and the grub installed on the BIOS will load
> and use that config file.  I've installed guixsd with --no-grub, I have
> libreboot installed, and the disk encrypted, now I just need to make it
> bootable!

Wow, cool!

`guix system --no-grub` will actually build out grub.cfg in the store,
just not write it to the actual bootloader configuration. So you can try
to `find /gnu/store -maxdepth 1 -name '*grub.cfg'` and copy it in place.

It will also print the location when running `reconfigure`:

address@hidden ~# guix system reconfigure --no-grub /etc/config.scm
substitute: updating list of substitutes from 'https://mirror.hydra.gnu.org'... 100.0%
The following derivation will be built:
   /gnu/store/dp0v27hgc93a18zva7wqnl5rl3h1yvm2-grub.cfg.drv
/gnu/store/r2y4bn5p162pah9lqa3mqyplj09va65x-system
/gnu/store/jnnzn804d2ss2vk7k8hxkzh07waj0x75-grub.cfg

> I think I need to make the correct grub config file available at that
> location whenever I reconfigure.  I can manage the coding, but I'd like
> hints on the best way to go about this with guix.

I think making the <grub-configuration> field take a "copy-only?" option
would be a decent fix for now. Currently the build code expects to run
"grub-install", look into gnu/system/grub.scm and gnu/build/install.scm
for starters.

> There are some other options I've considered.  I could reflash my BIOS as
> part of the reconfiguration process.  Or maybe I could chain-load two grub
> installations, possibly with an unencrypted /boot.

We don't have libreboot in Guix yet, but the ability to install it at
reconfigure time would be nice. Sounds risky, though :)