[bug#48314] [PATCH v3] Install guix system on Raspberry Pi

[Stefan]

Hi Petr!

> Good news. I managed to run Guix libre kernel on the raspberry pi.

Woot! Great!

> The issue was in the firmware

Good to know!

> I'll test it also on RPi3

In the meantime I got everything compiled and installed for my Raspberry Pi 3b 
as well. But there is some issue with the U-Boot. If I replace U-Boot with an 
older version, it boots and the system is running fine. However, during boot 
the Linux-Libre-Gnus and early kernel messages are not visible, but after boot 
all seems to be fine.

Maybe the troubles stem from the firmware, as in your case – I use a different 
one –, or maybe the U-Boot only works on a Pi 4.

I’m using the Linux-Libre kernel with the %bcmrpi3-defconfig from the Raspberry 
Pi Linux sources (removing a long list of unsupported configurations)

stefan@guix ~$ uname -a
Linux guix 5.18.12-bcmrpi3-v8 #1 SMP PREEMPT 1 aarch64 GNU/Linux

> I just have question regarding the example if it wouldn't be better to 
> prepare the whole image

Yes, certainly. As you may know I started with Guix on void with an NFS root 
file-system and patched Guix to get to this point, still on NFS. So I have no 
experience yet to build an image. 

From what I saw in the code, I guess that more work needs to be done to 
generate an image. My personal focus is to first get the patches merged.

> Should there be some manual how to prepare the firmware files or format the 
> SD card in case we prepare just the root filesystem and bootloader?

I think the comments in e.g. raspberry-pi-64.tmpl could be improved. A hint to 
the non-free firmware is certainly problematic. Not sure, if we should or even 
can mention the Raspberry Pi in the manual.

> IMHO having ISO image for Raspberry Pi 3,4 (aarch64) would be great as it 
> would allow them to run Guix easily without need to build it on some other 
> aarch64 machine or resort to crosscompile. What do you think?

Yes, I totally agree. I also think that it could help to spread Guix. It would 
be great to see something like e.g. Pi-hole in the future to be based on Guix 
System.

But first things first, the merge is still pending.

> Also there's small patch to fix deprecated calls in os-defintion files.

Thanks, much appreciated!


Bye

Stefan