bug#36611: Installation of a new guix system -- summaries of the issues
Hi Guix! I have just installed (successfully?) my first guix system! As a newcomer (I know system administration quite well, but never used guix before) I thought that I could share my experience (i.e. issues I had ;)) installing Guix. Probably some of the issues are obvious once you know Guix well, but they aren't when, like me, you don't. I hope using this list for this post is not inappropriate. I did not find any solution for some of the issues yet, so I would also welcome help on those! So, here is the list of issues I had. 1. An easy one: on a new computer, you now have to desactive this secure boot thingy, else the live CD won't boot. As I understand it the guix live CD is not "signed", which was the reason why it did not boot (while other live CDs did). This may sound obvious, except for people whose previous computer was still using the BIOS; so maybe it would be worth writing this in the installation instructions? 2. I had a lot of trouble understanding how profile worked; consequently I think I installed a lot of versions of different packages, which took ages. After a while, I understood that - guix pull creates a new profile, but is not used by default: why? Similarly, guix kept telling me that I should do # GUIX_PROFILE="/home/matthieu/.guix-profile" # . "$GUIX_PROFILE/etc/profile" So my question is: shouldn't the default .bashrc uses the newest guix command from guix pull, and contain these lines above? - sudo guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm is very different from sudo su; guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm. This is written explicitly in the documentation, so that was clear, but I fell into the trap. - guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm (without sudo) fails at a very late stage. Maybe this command should issue a warning when not run with root rights? 3. At one time it seems that my entire user profile disappeared (maybe I shut down my laptop at a wrong time). I had to reinstall every package I had installed with guix package -i. 4. I followed the initial exemple configuration of "A graphical system with a choice of lightweight window managers", but it did not contain any terminal emulator. 5. I installed Icecat but I am missing some fonts: some websites do not display properly (e.g. numbers do not show up), even if I untick "do not load custom fonts" (unticking this improves things a bit). So I believe some more font package should be installed with icecat. 6. I had issues with gdm and lightdm, so I installed the xinit package to start X sessions manually. But it seems that startx/xinit looks for a X server in the same path than the xinit binary, which won't work on guix. 7. nm-applet fails with this warning Failed to add/activate connection: (1) Not authorized to control networking. I have to do sudo nm-applet to have it working (but it works well, wifi and wired) 8. Is there an equivalent to apt-file, e.g. a way to know in which packages a file would be located? This would be very useful, for instance I had trouble finding where the latex executable is located, or ghc complaining about finding linux/errno.h when I wanted to install xmonad. The problem is even more important for guix, as in other systems the dependencies eventually show up in your profile (e.g. installing texlive-latex-beamer would install the latex binary), whereas in guix you have to explicitely install the right package in Guix. 9. nm-applet cannot find the right icon sets, so it uses a "forbidden sign" icon everywhere (which is a bit scary). The error I get is failed to load icon "nm-stage03-connecting11": Icon 'nm-stage03-connecting11' not present in theme Adwaita so I guess some icon are missing; I tried to install gnome-icon-theme with no luck. 10. My latest problem happened when I tried to install slim (but the problem remains when I switch back to gdm or tried to use a previous system configuration, which surprised me). Now when I boot, I have a "gdm" user that was created and which attemps to log 505 times, which freezes my computer for 2 minutes (I I try to use it at the same times, it hangs). My work-around is to switch to the console and wait that all these unsuccessful connection stops, but this is not ideal... 11. Before I found this work-around I tried to fix the problem by booting + chrooting from another OS, a solution I have often used to fix my OS but could not do on guix... Which scares me a bit because I fill that I have no easy way to fix my OS if it was broken. Is there an easy way to do that in guix? 12. I also remember that the installer said something like "I will erase the whole disk and you would loose all your data", while I used the manual partitionning scheme and asked to format only one partition, and this was a bit scary. Wow, that was a long list. Obviously I did not write about everything that went well during the installation, so thanks for your hard work! By
bug#36611: Installation of a new guix system -- summaries of the issues
(Cross-posting to help-guix as it may be more appropriate) I now have two additional issues: 13. My profile disappeared once again and guix package does not work anymore (it says "guix package: error: unsupported manifest format"). I realize that my .guix-profile/etc/profile file has been emptied. Maybe I had a problem during an upgrade, but aren't guix upgrades supposed to be atomic? 14. Also, my X server hangs unless I force the BIOS to use the "discrete card", which uses more power. My laptop uses an hyprid intel/nvidia configuration, is this supported by guix? Thanks, Matthieu De: "racin" À: "bug-guix" Envoyé: Vendredi 12 Juillet 2019 00:32:37 Objet: Installation of a new guix system -- summaries of the issues Hi Guix! I have just installed (successfully?) my first guix system! As a newcomer (I know system administration quite well, but never used guix before) I thought that I could share my experience (i.e. issues I had ;)) installing Guix. Probably some of the issues are obvious once you know Guix well, but they aren't when, like me, you don't. I hope using this list for this post is not inappropriate. I did not find any solution for some of the issues yet, so I would also welcome help on those! So, here is the list of issues I had. 1. An easy one: on a new computer, you now have to desactive this secure boot thingy, else the live CD won't boot. As I understand it the guix live CD is not "signed", which was the reason why it did not boot (while other live CDs did). This may sound obvious, except for people whose previous computer was still using the BIOS; so maybe it would be worth writing this in the installation instructions? 2. I had a lot of trouble understanding how profile worked; consequently I think I installed a lot of versions of different packages, which took ages. After a while, I understood that - guix pull creates a new profile, but is not used by default: why? Similarly, guix kept telling me that I should do # GUIX_PROFILE="/home/matthieu/.guix-profile" # . "$GUIX_PROFILE/etc/profile" So my question is: shouldn't the default .bashrc uses the newest guix command from guix pull, and contain these lines above? - sudo guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm is very different from sudo su; guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm. This is written explicitly in the documentation, so that was clear, but I fell into the trap. - guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm (without sudo) fails at a very late stage. Maybe this command should issue a warning when not run with root rights? 3. At one time it seems that my entire user profile disappeared (maybe I shut down my laptop at a wrong time). I had to reinstall every package I had installed with guix package -i. 4. I followed the initial exemple configuration of "A graphical system with a choice of lightweight window managers", but it did not contain any terminal emulator. 5. I installed Icecat but I am missing some fonts: some websites do not display properly (e.g. numbers do not show up), even if I untick "do not load custom fonts" (unticking this improves things a bit). So I believe some more font package should be installed with icecat. 6. I had issues with gdm and lightdm, so I installed the xinit package to start X sessions manually. But it seems that startx/xinit looks for a X server in the same path than the xinit binary, which won't work on guix. 7. nm-applet fails with this warning Failed to add/activate connection: (1) Not authorized to control networking. I have to do sudo nm-applet to have it working (but it works well, wifi and wired) 8. Is there an equivalent to apt-file, e.g. a way to know in which packages a file would be located? This would be very useful, for instance I had trouble finding where the latex executable is located, or ghc complaining about finding linux/errno.h when I wanted to install xmonad. The problem is even more important for guix, as in other systems the dependencies eventually show up in your profile (e.g. installing texlive-latex-beamer would install the latex binary), whereas in guix you have to explicitely install the right package in Guix. 9. nm-applet cannot find the right icon sets, so it uses a "forbidden sign" icon everywhere (which is a bit scary). The error I get is failed to load icon "nm-stage03-connecting11": Icon 'nm-stage03-connecting11' not present in theme Adwaita so I guess some icon are missing; I tried to install gnome-icon-theme with no luck. 10. My latest problem happened when I tried to install slim (but the problem remains when I switch back to gdm or tried to use a previous system configuration, which surprised me). Now when I boot, I have a "gdm" user that was created and which attemps to log 505 times
bug#36611: Installation of a new guix system -- summaries of the issues
Hello
(Julien, Sorry I cannot answer to your email as my provider rejected it for no
reason; I read you through the web archives)
I checked: fsck does not report any error. It is posssible that I have tried to
install several packages in parallel
(I do this all the time with apt, but it uses a lock and issues a warning).
I checked and actually my manifest in .guix-profile is empty. The other, in
.config/guix/current, is as follows:
(manifest
(version 3)
(packages
(("guix"
"f67f93b"
"out"
"/gnu/store/vz4ri5akjjydgq0x443qcchzhcrxi7cq-guix-f67f93b6d"
(propagated-inputs ())
(search-paths ())
(properties
(source
(repository
(version 0)
(url "https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git";)
(branch "master")
(commit
"f67f93b6d60c898c3125068b468c2a339678916a")
("nonguix"
"5ca352e"
"out"
"/gnu/store/5fwmnl472wm7wynby4b42ympqrc9v2dh-nonguix"
(propagated-inputs ())
(search-paths ())
(properties
(source
(repository
(version 0)
(url "https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix";)
(branch "master")
(commit
"5ca352ead269e9037c0314140c2fe7854b3fbe2d"
Thanks,
Matthieu
De: "racin"
À: "bug-guix" , "help-guix"
Envoyé: Vendredi 12 Juillet 2019 11:04:00
Objet: Re: Installation of a new guix system -- summaries of the issues
(Cross-posting to help-guix as it may be more appropriate)
I now have two additional issues:
13. My profile disappeared once again and guix package does not work anymore
(it says "guix package: error: unsupported manifest format"). I realize that my
.guix-profile/etc/profile file has been emptied.
Maybe I had a problem during an upgrade, but aren't guix upgrades supposed to
be atomic?
14. Also, my X server hangs unless I force the BIOS to use the "discrete card",
which uses more power. My laptop uses an hyprid intel/nvidia configuration, is
this supported by guix?
Thanks,
Matthieu
De: "racin"
À: "bug-guix"
Envoyé: Vendredi 12 Juillet 2019 00:32:37
Objet: Installation of a new guix system -- summaries of the issues
Hi Guix!
I have just installed (successfully?) my first guix system!
As a newcomer (I know system administration quite well, but never used
guix before) I thought that I could share my experience (i.e. issues I
had ;)) installing Guix. Probably some of the issues are obvious once
you know Guix well, but they aren't when, like me, you don't. I hope
using this list for this post is not inappropriate.
I did not find any solution for some of the issues yet, so I would
also welcome help on those!
So, here is the list of issues I had.
1. An easy one: on a new computer, you now have to desactive this
secure boot thingy, else the live CD won't boot. As I understand it
the guix live CD is not "signed", which was the reason why it did not
boot (while other live CDs did). This may sound obvious, except for
people whose previous computer was still using the BIOS; so maybe it
would be worth writing this in the installation instructions?
2. I had a lot of trouble understanding how profile worked;
consequently I think I installed a lot of versions of different
packages, which took ages.
After a while, I understood that
- guix pull creates a new profile, but is not used by default: why?
Similarly, guix kept telling me that I should do
# GUIX_PROFILE="/home/matthieu/.guix-profile"
# . "$GUIX_PROFILE/etc/profile"
So my question is: shouldn't the default .bashrc uses the newest
guix command from guix pull, and contain these lines above?
- sudo guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm is very different from
sudo su; guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm.
This is written explicitly in the documentation, so that was clear,
but I fell into the trap.
- guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm (without sudo) fails at a
very late stage. Maybe this command should issue a warning when not
run with root rights?
3. At one time it seems that my entire user profile disappeared (maybe
I shut down my laptop at a wrong time). I had to reinstall every
package I had installed with guix package -i.
4. I followed the initial exemple configuration of "A graphical system
with a choice of lightweight window managers", but it did not contain
any terminal emulator.
5. I installed Icecat but I am missing some fonts: some websites do
not display properly (e.g. numbers do not show up), even if I untick
"do not load custom fonts" (unticking this improves things a bit). So
I believe some more font package should be installed with icecat.
6. I had issues with gdm and lightdm, so I installed the xinit package
to start X sessions manually. But it seems that startx/xinit looks for
a X server in the same path than the xinit bin
bug#36611: Disappearing profile?
Hello Ludovic, > What do you mean by “my profile disappeared once again”? Is the > ~/.guix-profile symlink still around? What does: > > readlink -f ~/.guix-profile > > show? > .guix-profile points to /var/guix/profiles/per-user/matthieu/guix-profile as it should. But the packages that I had installed, like file or the urxvt command from rxvt-unicode, are no longer in my path. The last time this happened, my manifest file was still working, but guix package -I told that I had no installed package. > Regarding the “unsupported manifest format” error: what’s the content of > ~/.guix-profile/manifest? (You previously posted the contents of > ~/.config/guix/current/manifest, but it’s not relevant here.) It exists, but is entirely empty (has size 0) > > In general profiles cannot “disappear”. A potential issue one may > encounter is that, if you running several “guix install” or “guix > package” commands simultaneously, one of them will “win”, meaning that > work done by the other one is discarded. However, that cannot lead to > the “unsupported manifest format” error. > > Did you happen to run several such commands in parallel? Yes, I believe I did. I did not know this would cause such a mess! Thanks, Matthieu
