On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 04:52:19PM +0000, Maxime Devos wrote: > Are there any good reasons for having a timeout at all? > (Except for the local-user denial of service, but local users can do > "guix build -f something-that-allocates-almost-all-memory-and-melts- > the-cpu.scm" anyway ...) > > If not, can the timeout be disabled/set to infinity?
Could be. But I think that, based on a several years of reports, the X200 with an HDD is the slowest machine used with Guix System. On my X200 with HDD, I have personally experienced similar race-y bugs that seem to crop up after major upgrades --- I assume that it's a case of bad luck, where important programs for booting move to distant parts of the disk and seeking is too slow. > A comment like > > > ;; Set timeout to a huge number (16.6 hours), because > > ;; upstream often sets timeouts low for spinning disks, > > ;; slow CPUs, etc. > > (limit [...] "60000") > > could be useful (I'm assuming the timeout is in seconds here). I suggest we wait until such drastic action is necessary. Otherwise we might be banging our heads against the wall in a few years, trying to debug something. Let's not rush to extremes :)
