Re: Installing guix

[Amirouche Boubekki]

2014-12-15 23:54 GMT+01:00 Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden>:
> Amirouche Boubekki <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> My machine is kind of recent, and previously with other distro I had
>> all sort of trouble with uefi. Not this time, I don't know what is the
>> configuration of guix, I've just setup my bios to avoid uefi.
>
> Yeah, Guix doesn’t support UEFI.  (I’m not sure exactly what it takes,
> but we should discuss that in a bug.)
>
>> The 0.8 release has not wpa_supplicant and I didn't want to move the
>> machine around, so I modified the system/install.scm in guix-0.8 and
>> ran:
>>
>>    # guix system disk-image gnu/system/install.scm
>>
>> I dropped "--image-size=800MiB" otherwise the image failed build.
>>
>>    # dd if=/gnu/store/.....image-disk of=/dev/sdb
>>
>> When I boot the disk, I find out guix is version 0.7.
>
> Maybe the ‘guix’ command above is 0.7, no?

I don't remember. In the 0.8 release there is:

- guix is guix-devel 0.7
- guix-0.7

And no guix 0.8

>> I was under the impression that this wasn't compatible with my system
>> config.scm. So I went back to guix-0.8 and changed
>> package-mangement.scm recipe so that guix is guix 0.8 instead of
>> 0.7. There is also guix-devel but... This was not very user friendly
>> but hey, guix is alpha.
>>
>> When the disk boots I connect to the wifi with the following commands
>>
>>    # wpa_passphrase <ssid> <passphrase> > wpa.conf
>>    # wpa_supplicant -B -w<interface name> -cwpa.conf
>>
>> Then:
>>
>>   # dhclient <interface name>
>
> OK.
>
>> To create partitions I used the graphical cfdisk command, then format them 
>> with:
>>
>>   # mkfs.ext4 -L <name> <device>
>>
>> I used two partition one for root another for home. I mounted only the
>> root partition (previous attempts I learned that it's not required to
>> mount home, but you need to create the home directory with the correct
>> permissions...):
>>
>>   # mount -L root /mnt/
>>
>> I copy pasted the config.scm to /mnt/etc/ that I had cooked started
>> cow-store with
>>
>>   # deco start cow-store /mnt
>>
>> I went swimming and when back GNU Guix was on my system :)
>
> Nice.  Guix is good for your health!  :-)

>
>> I did quite a bit of experiments to get nouveau drivers (libre nvidia
>> drivers) working. I remember trying them previously and they are (can
>> be) quiet good. I just tested http://minetest.net it reports that
>> nouveau drivers are kicking.
>
> Good.
>
>> With slim-service, Xorg will look for a .xsession in $HOME and not
>> .xinitrc!
>
> Could you email address@hidden for that?
>
>> I attached my .xsession file, but do not use it if you don't have all
>> the command available, otherwise xorg will loop-restart indefinitly...
>
> I think .xsession should end with “exec dwm”, no “dwm”.

For the last command it's not required.


> Also, see <http://bugs.gnu.org/19119>.

Yes, I needed to source my .bashrc to be able to execute commands that
were installed as a user.


>> It's not the case anymore but at some point I had several version of
>> guix 0.7, 0.8-devel, and 0.9. Now I have only 0.9.
>>
>> - Also su and sudo doesn't source /etc/profile.
>
> This should be fixed with the recent changes in that area.
>
>> - xterm was aweful, I installed st cf. suckless.scm I use ``guix -L
>> `pwd` -e "(let ((x (use-modules (suckless)))) st)"`` command to
>> install st. I'm wondering if there is better way to do.
>
> “guix -L $PWD st” should work, provided $PWD/suckless.scm exists.
>
> BTW, you’re welcome to submit these new packages!

Yes, I'll do (after some guile hacking ;)

>> - I find my "nouveau hack" quiet ugly, but I'm not sure how the
>> situation can be improved (cf. config.scm)
>
> I thought xf86-video-nv (already in xorg.scm) is Nouveau, but apparently
> it’s not?

nv is the old the driver without 3D acceleration: http://www.x.org/wiki/nv/


> You’re more knowledgeable than me in this area as you can see ;-), so
> please do submit the packages and tricks that appear in your config.scm
> so we can make things work out-of-the-box for future Nouveau users.
>
>> - During my test, I failed to get XORG_DRI_DRIVER_PATH working (cf
>> (gnu services xorg)) , nix-os is the only distro to use it.
>> LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH doesn't work either.
>
> Could you be more precise?
>
>> - I'm not sure anymore about .guix-profile link, whether it gets
>> created or not at some point.
>
> ~/.guix-profile is created the first time ‘guix package’ is used.
>
>> - I don't know if it's on purpose but $HOME/.guix-profile/sbin is
>> missing from $PATH
>
> Right.  I think it’s fine this way.  WDYT?
>
>> - I need a hat.
>
> Sorry, can’t help with that.
>
>> At some point, I'm not sure why anymore, I had to chroot into the
>> installed guix from the installation disk, here is what I did:
>
> Well, I’m not sure why either.  :-)
>
>> I still need a service for wpa-supplicant at some point, but my
>> current configuration is good.
>>
>> So far, so good.
>
> Great.  Well, thanks for the detailed feedback!  I think you owe us a
> couple of bug reports and a bunch of new packages now.  :-)

I will come back to guix "avant-garde" ;) after some guile hacking for sure.