Re: Installing custom kernel on Intel NUC using USB and no network(newbie question)

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hello Will,

I'm late but thought I'd answer what I can.

Will Schenk <address@hidden> writes:

> I'm playing around with guixsd and am really impressed with the work so
> far!  I've been unpacking the installer and configuration trying to
> understand how it works.  so if there's a more straightforward way to do
> this that would be great also, but I have some questions on how guix itself
> works.
>
> I'm trying to install guix on a IntelNUC where I don't have access to a
> wired connection.  This requires me to use the iwlwifi-firmware.

As the GNU Guix project only supports free software, the best way would
be to equip your device with some external USB dongle that runs on
entirely free software (I personally use a TPE-N150USB).

> I have a docker container on my OSX machine that installs guix on a debian
> image, and from there I add another channel to guix that has the standard
> linux kernel.  From there I build an installation iso that I copy to USB
> key, boot the nuc off of, and am able to install the system over WiFi and
> everything is great.

With a supported device, these convoluted steps would become unnecessary :-).

> My plan was to then change my /etc/config.scm file to include the packages
> that I built in the docker container to provision the system with a
> different kernel.  What I can't figure out is how to copy the package over
> in a way that guix system reconfigure can see them just using a USB stick.
>
> Question 1:
>
> On the docker container, if I do guix archive --recursive --export linux  >
> linux.nar and then move it over to the nuc, I can successfully guix archive
> --import the package into the /gnu/store.  How do I then reference that
> package?

Guix should reference that same package upon a 'guix system {init,
reconfigure}' *if* the Guix commit used is the same, and the system
configuration is the same.

> I tried to guix package -i /gnu/store/asdfasdf-linx but it fails because
> there are missing dependencies which it tries to build, and that obviously
> fails because there's no network.  This seems like it shouldn't happen
> based upon my understanding of the guix archive docs -- it implies that all
> the dependancies would be included.

Hmm, I didn't know the install command accepted store paths as an
input... It appears undocumented, so I can't tell if it's supposed to
work as you think it should.

What *should* work, is to 'guix archive --export -r $(readlink -f
/var/guix/profiles/system/your-system-generation-link)' > system-closure.nar

Then import this on the target system, making sure the Guix on that
target machine is exactly the same as the one which produced those store
items (e.g, 'guix describe' should mention the same commit ID).

And then reconfiguring the system on the target, using exactly the same
operating system definition as was used on the target system.

> Question 2:
>
> The setup on the usb key works so I was looking at ways to pull the config
> off of that.  The installation image has no /etc/config.scm however, so I
> don't really know what to base it off it.  Also, it would be great if the
> graphical installer actually let you edit the config.scm that it generates,
> so that I could tweak that and see if I could alter the kernel definition.

Those are feature requests that might be worth tracking at address@hidden.

> It seems to me that the installation should take the existing packages on
> the device and then build the environment and copy it over.  What I'd like
> is to figure out how to "get a closure of the packages installed on the
> current machine" and then copy that to /mnt or whatever it would take to
> get it onto the actual destination disk.  Is that possible, to move the
> packages over manually in some way?

I think what I suggest above (copying the closure of a system) is pretty
much what you are asking here :-).

> Question 3:
>
> It seems crazy to me that I'm downloading everything over and over.  At the
> office (where I was playing with this) we have fiber, but right here we
> have a terrible network connection so downloading multiple times is
> painful.  Is there a way to setup a local mirror of the builds (I'm waiting
> for ipfs backing for this obvious.)

Again, you can think of /gnu/store as a cache; as long as nothing
changes (e.g. your Guix version is the same, the channel you pull from
is fixed to some commit, your system configuration is the same), the
package hashes it computes should be the same of the (pre-existing)
entries of the store, and thus should simply reuse those without a need
to download anything.

> Anyway, what I really dont understand is the guix archive behavior and why
> that didn't work, and how to reference the packages once they've been
> imported into either my profile and especially the config.scm.
>
> Thanks, and I'm very excited to be playing with guix!

I hope my above explanations help;

Have fun with Guix :-)

Maxim