Re: none

[Ludovic Courtès]

Tomas Cech <address@hidden> skribis:

> I tried to install Guix as alternative OS to my Gentoo and openSUSE
> installations to give a try. I tried unsupported scenario -
> installation on LVM volume and separate /boot partition until I was
> told it is unsupported. Separate boot wasn't hard as I had to just
> copy generated files so they are loaded.

OK, but there’s still an open bug on that topic.  :-)
http://bugs.gnu.org/19220

> 1] if you set device to partition (and not to disk) in your 
> grub-configuration like this:
>
>  (bootloader (grub-configuration
>                (device "/dev/sda4")))

Why would you want to use a partition and not a disk?  I didn’t know
this was even possible.

> `guix system init' will fail on grub installation. By default Grub
> tries to fit in the beginning of partition and fails if it can't fit
> in. I asked about this behaviour on Grub mailing list and it seems
> that there are two options:
>
>   a] add `--force' to command line and use block list for keeping information 
> about position of Grub's core.img
>   b] use filesystem which allows embedding - BtrFS or ZFS
>
> I verified both options (a] and then b] with BtrFS) and it no longer fails.
>
> But,
> ad a] - I don't feel safe passing `--force' to grub-install every
> time. So if installation fails on this point and you'd like to use
> your FS anyway, you can pass `--no-grub' to `guix system init' and
> then rung grub-install manually.
>
> ad b] - I don't feel safe using still experimental BtrFS.

OK.  I think the conclusion for Guix is to leave the defaults unchanged.
Perhaps we could add a ‘force?’ field to the ‘grub-configuration’ data
type to allow those who know what they doing to get the effect of
‘--force’.  WDYT?

> 2] current Grub version in Guix during boots generated this error:
>
> error: symbol 'grub_term_highlight_color' not found
>
> and started rescue shell.
> It seems to be a bit mystic bug:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/1289977

Strange.  I haven’t experienced it.  Sounds like a .mod wasn’t found or
something like that?  That could be a bug related to separate /boot.

> I'm also interested in running chroot in Guix. This is something I
> like about all Linux distribution I use - I can run Linux and at the
> same time I prepare another Linux root filesystem for use. It seems
> that chrooting into Guix may be tricky.
>
> I prepared this script to be placed somewhere into Guix:
>
> ----------%<---------
> #!/run/current-system/profile/bin/bash
>
> export LIBRARY_PATH=LIBRARY_PATH=/root/.guix-profile/lib
> export CPATH=/root/.guix-profile/include
> export 
> PATH=/run/setuid-programs:/run/current-system/profile/sbin:/root/.guix-profile/bin:/run/current-system/profile/bin
> export 
> INFOPATH=/root/.guix-profile/share/info:/run/current-system/profile/share/info
>
> exec bash -i
> ----------%<--------
>
> for i in dev proc sys; do mount -R /$i /guix_mountpoint/$i; done
> chroot /guix_mountpoint/ /helper_script.sh

I suppose this works, right?

> Ludovic said that `guix packages --search-paths' should generate similar path 
> configuration so it may be the right way, but it didn't work for me.

I realize ‘guix package --search-paths’ wouldn’t suffice here.  You may
want to source /etc/profile from within the chroot.

> And last thing I wanted to mention, you have kind community around Guix and 
> Guile. It's really motivating!

Thanks for your feedback and for the kind words!

Ludo’.