Hi all,

On Fri, 2025-03-14 at 14:34 +0000, crevyx wrote:
> I am trying to create an image booting a btrfs partition with legacy
> BIOS, but no luck so far.

I started experimenting with Guix on a spare laptop where EFI was
available. Now I want to use it in one of my main computers, running
Coreboot but without EFI support enabled. So I would like to create a
legacy boot setup, with encryption.

I tried multiple times via the terminal interface, of Guix System 1.4.0
Thus far I came to the following.

Partitioning scheme, adjusted from default EFI suggestion, with the
limitations that GUI doesn't allow MBR instead of GPT and doesn't offer
ext2 partitioning foor boot partition

/dev/sda gpt
- 1 576MB  ext4 boot,esp /boot
- 2 2000GB btrfs         /      cryptroot

Default config adjusted for the bootloader-configuration:
(bootloader (bootloader-configuration)
  (bootloader grub-bootloader)
  (targets (list "dev/sda"))
  (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout)))

I left the default setting to mount to /boot as a result from the
partitioning step.

This results in the following error:

guix system: error: 'gnu/store/<snip>-grub-2.06/sbin/grub-install --no-
floppy --target=i386-pc --boot-directory /mnt/boot /dev/sda' exited
with status 1; output follows:

  Installing for i386-pc platform.
  /gnu/store/<snip>-grub-2.06/sbin/grub-install: warning: this GPT
partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be
possible.
  /gnu/store/<snip>-grub-2.06/sbin/grub-install: warning: Embedding is
not possible.  GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using
blocklists.  However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is
discouraged..
  /gnu/store/<snip>-grub-2.06/sbin/grub-install: error: will not
proceed with blocklists.

Is it even possible to install in legacy mode via the terminal GUI?
Where can I find a good recommendation to install in legacy mode? The
Guix manual describes the system configuration options, but lacks a
more coherent example of how to set up legacy boot.

In Debian legacy boot is easily configured.

Alternatively I would have to enable EFI support on my Coreboot
machines, but that would be more work.

Hopefully you can help me configure this.

Kind regards,
Nico

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