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i decided to try guix on my old netbook as host system.
i downloaded i686 release, dropped it to usb and booted from it on my netbook.
next i tried to follow text ui installer, but at the begining during network configuration it failed (i have no dhcp server in my netwrok, and i do not want to create one just for guix installation). unfortunately guix does not allow to manually configure network via installer text ui, but it does allow to exit into root shell, so i decided to configure network by hand and retry installation via text ui. guix have some dhcp client, or maybe even more than this, "connmand" or something like this, which is looks like same shit as nwetwork manager, constantly trying to broke my network settings, i killed it. finally i am have working network. returned to text ui installer and restarted installation process. on network configuration step this network autoconfiguration shit launched again and broke settings again. so text ui installer is not an option without running dhcp server.
i started to read documentation. guix does have possibility to install it manualy. process is relatively simple. i need to do partitioning, configure network, next i need to mount root partition in /mnt root (which is unusual and not recommended as i know, as some utilities may incorrectly handle such mounts).
next step is turn on cow store on mounted partition to write /gnu/store changes, done. next i need to copy system configuration sample and edit it, also done. fortunately it is human readable and easy to understand, next step is "guix system init /mnt/etc/config.scm /mnt", which should deploy system, install and configure bootloader and kernel, good, i launched it. it started. lot's of things downloaded (i choosed minimal desktop template, as it is old netbook and i need lightweight base system), also i thought what 20gb partitioon is more than enough for this (preveously i had gentoo on 10 gb partition on this netbook), so, it took something like 6-8 hours (even for base system some programs building from source, for powerful pc it's ok, but on low end outdated netbook this is a problem), and when i next time looked at this netbook, it is finished. but, surprisingly i saw not "finished" and not "success" message, but "no space left on device" instead, cool, 20gb is not enough for basic minimal desktop.., ok guix, i decided it worth another try, i unmounted this partition, created larger one, and prepared to restart ( guix system init /mnt/etc/config.scm /mnt ), but not that quick, remember at the begining it was necessary to start cow storage on rw mounted filesystem ?, on filesystem which i had unmounted and destroyed, of course it does not worked with i/o errors, here i not sure if it is guix problem, or maybe kernel bug, but i have unmounted partition without any problem, guix cow storage is built on top of overlayfs and i think it should not allow me to unmount fs with mounted overlayfs on top of it, but this is tale for another time, for now, i have new clean partition, and guix store in broken state, now i decided to unmount all overlays attached to store, of course it is failing because it is mounted on filesystem which is not exists anymore, but wa have -l option for umount here, which often helps in such situations, so, umount -t overlayfs -l /gnu/store until none left, next starting guix cow storage again, commend return success, restarting ( guix system init /mnt/etc/config.scm /mnt ), i/o error, so i learned what i should try nixos next time on this netbook.
#linux #guix #netbook #fail
