Re: Trying to install Guix with Qemu

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2014 30 Sep 01:59 -0500, Ernesto Celis wrote:
> I know this thread is about qemu, but as you said you are a VitrualBox
> user, it may be interesting to you.
> 
> Last weekend I was able to install Guix 0.7 on virtualBox with the USB
> image provided by Guix developers. I put my notes on gitorious.
> 
> https://gitorious.org/ecelis-guix/hackathon
> 
> Check the Changelog file for some problems.

Nice work, Ernesto.

I actually have a larger hard drive on order for my laptop so I can try
the GNU System w/Guix on bare metal.  There will be some issues such as
the Intel wireless hardware, but I also have an Atheros based USB
adapter from Think Penguin I can try.  If nothing else I'll have far
more drive space for VM disks in the Debian partition.  :-)

Also, your instructions for installing Guix on Slackware is interesting
to me.  With Debian moving to systemd, I am looking back at Slackware
and now GNU should systemd become intolerable.  As Slackware has a
rudimentary concept of package management, Guix seems like a good fit.
At this time this is all a fun experiment for me.

Thanks!

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Re: Dates set to Dec 31 1969

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2014 27 Sep 09:35 -0500, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> It should be noted that it’s actually Jan. 1st 1970 UTC.  :-)

D'oh!  Indeed.  As I am six hours behind (America/Chicago) the system
rightly interprets the beginning of the epoch UTC as the prior day
here.  All these years and that never dawned on me.

One is never around this stuff so much that there isn't something new to
be learned.  :-)

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Re: Dates set to Dec 31 1969

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2014 27 Sep 08:32 -0500, David Thompson wrote:
> 
> This is by design in order to have more deterministic builds.  If two
> files have the same contents but have different timestamps, then they
> will have different hashes.

Thanks, David.

That helps me understand the system a bit better.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Dates set to Dec 31 1969

[Nate Bargmann]

As much as I'd like to be six years old again in some aspects, I'm
curious why most of the dates under /gnu/store and under ~/.guix-profile
are set to Dec 31 1969?  Yes, I know that this is just before the
beginning of the Unix epoch, which must figure into the equation in some
way.

If this is in the FM, I apologize for the noise as I haven't completed
the manual yet.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Re: Possible error in the manual?

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2014 23 Sep 07:22 -0500, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Be aware that version X or Guix cannot contains a package of Guix
> version X.  So Guix 0.7 actually comes with a pre-0.7 snapshot.  This
> should be visible in the directory name in:
> 
>   readlink $(type -P guix)

Embedded in the returned string is 'guix-0.6.0-'.  I do recall seeing
that reference during the installation and wondering why the previous
version would be downloaded.  Now I know.

> To get a newer Guix, it should be enough to run ‘guix pull’.  That
> should give you the ‘--show’ options and lots of other bleeding-edge
> things.  ;-)

Thanks, I will try that.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Re: Possible error in the manual?

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2014 23 Sep 05:09 -0500, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Nate Bargmann  skribis:
> 
> > Running 'guix --version' returns "guix (GNU Guix) 0.7" ...
> 
> Could it be that this is actually a pre-0.7 installation?  Or perhaps
> ~/.config/guix/latest points to a pre-0.7 version?  This option appeared
> in 0.7.

I double checked and Guix is reporting the version string I quoted
above.  I don't see "pre-" shown anywhere.

I installed the GNU System from:

ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guix/gnu-usb-install-0.7.i686.xz

which is the link (more or less) provided in the online manual.

> The on-line manual corresponds to the latest release, currently 0.7.

Thanks, Ludo.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Possible error in the manual?

[Nate Bargmann]

Reading through the Guix manual I am in section "3.2 Invoking guix
package" and tried the --show=package option.  I receive the following
error from Guix:

  $ guix package --show=emacs
  guix package error: show=emacs: unrecognized option

Running 'guix package --help' indeed shows no option named '--show'.
Running 'guix --version' returns "guix (GNU Guix) 0.7" ...

Does the online Guix manual reflect unreleased features found only in
the repository?  Or is this a superseded option and the manual is
lagging a bit?

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Re: Trying to install Guix with Qemu

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2014 21 Sep 13:56 -0500, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> This is weird, there’s no reason why it would be slower than whatever
> else you did before.  Are you running QEMU with ‘-enable-kvm’?

Yes.  The only difference that I could really see is that I chose to
create my image in the qcow2 format rather than raw.  Here is what I
used to do the installation:

qemu-system-i386 -enable-kvm -m 512 -hdb Guix.qcow2 -usb 
~/tmp/gnu-usb-install-0.7.i686

This runs quickly enough, although a far cry from a native installation.

> This device name is passed directly to ‘grub-install’.  If that command
> supports UUIDs, that would work.  I suspect it really needs a /dev name,
> though (info "(grub) Invoking grub-install"):
> 
>grub-install INSTALL_DEVICE
> 
>  The device name INSTALL_DEVICE is an OS device name or a GRUB device
>   name.

Looking in the Grub info documentation on my Debian system confirms the
above and is silent on the issue of UUID.

> Now, this device name just needs to be correct at the time GRUB is
> installed; it doesn’t matter afterwards.

Thanks very much for that clue.  I ran the installation with grub set to
install to /dev/sdb and it happily booted into the hard disk image.  Now
my task is to read the manual and get familiar with Guix.

Thanks!

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Re: Trying to install Guix with Qemu

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2014 20 Sep 15:36 -0500, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> FWIW a recipe to install the system in a VM was posted at
> 
> (also read subsequent messages for troubleshooting.)

Trying the method shown in the referenced thread, except for having a
separate swap image, left me with a very slow system to boot.  It took
about two minutes for the Grub menu to appear and then I gave up after
several minutes of no indication that the kernel would ever start.  I
suspect the VM had device contention between competing /dev/sda devices.

I went back to the way I had originally had success booting the USB
image file and now my target hard disk is /dev/sdb1.  Looking at the SCM
template in section 6.1.4 of the installation manual, I see the function
template:

 (bootloader (grub-configuration (device "/dev/sdX")))

Is it possible to specify a UUID for the device here?  That would be
unambiguous as when the new installation is started, it should be
/dev/sda but is presently /dev/sdb.  Am I over thinking this?

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Re: Trying to install Guix with Qemu

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2014 20 Sep 15:36 -0500, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> FWIW a recipe to install the system in a VM was posted at
> 
> (also read subsequent messages for troubleshooting.)

Ahhh, thanks.  I will check that out.

> The best thing to do is to assign a label to that partition, and then
> refer to that label in config.scm, as noted under “Preparing for
> Installation” at
> .

Thanks for that clue as well.  I recall that I did not assign a label
when I partitioned the VM image.  That will probably help.

> It’s even better on the metal.  ;-)

I'll have to give that a try.  Certainly, this interests me as it's good
to see a GNU system coming together.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Trying to install Guix with Qemu

[Nate Bargmann]

I've just started playing with Guix and would like to do so using Qemu
rather than bare metal.  As the GNU system is only available for Guix
0.7 as a USB drive image, this has posed a bit of a vexing problem to
me.  I am a Qemu novice (I usually use Virtual Box) but I did get it to
boot the USB image file and also was able to mount a created qcow2 disk
image for it.  That is where I seem to have run aground.

It seems that Qemu when passed the -usb option makes that image /dev/sda
and the image file I intend to install to must be given with the -hdb
option.  When I edited /mnt/etc/config.scm I assumed the disk image
would be /dev/sda but that seems to have resulted in at least Grub
(maybe more packages) being installed into the USB image.  Clearly, this
isn't what I want.  Do I specify /dev/sdb in config.scm and then just
boot it as -hdb in the future?

I apologize if this is more of a Qemu question as I didn't see anything
in the Qemu documentation that steered me toward reversing its drive
assignments.  Hopefully, I'm not the only person interested in exploring
the GNU system/Guix in a virtual machine, am I?

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us