When you have separate btrfs subvolumes for /gnu and /var/guix, you'll encounter this error running `guix system init /mnt/etc/config.scm /mnt` when it tries to copy things to /mnt. My guess is that guix is trying to remove one of them but fails as they're mounted. I encountered this issue while I tried installing guix system on my main laptop. But I have encountered this before [1]. When I installed guix system on my secondary laptop. I worked around it back then by using guix-0.15.0. For my secondary laptop I have this layout | subvol | Mountpoint | Comment | |-----------------------+------------+-----------------| | __current/guixsd-root | / | root for GuixSD | | __current/grub | /boot/grub | grub config | | __current/guix | /var/guix | guix stuff | | __current/gnu | /gnu | Store etc | | __current/home | /home | home partition | For my main laptop I tried: | subvol | Mountpoint | Comment | |--------+------------+----------------| | @ | / | root for Guix | | @grub | /boot/grub | grub config | | @guix | /var/guix | guix stuff | | @gnu | /gnu | Store etc | | @home | /home | home partition | Found another thread that also had this issue [2], and the same workaround worked for me. I.e. simplified the layout: | subvol | Mountpoint | Comment | |-----------+------------+----------------| | @ | / | root for Guix | | @home | /home | home partition | This seems to just be an issue when running guix system init, as I've been using my secondary laptop with separate subvolumes for /gnu and /var/guix without any issues since 0.15. The guix version I used to install my main laptop with was 1.1.0-25.44c6e6f. I generated it with guix system disk-image --file-system-type=iso9660 \ gnu/system/install.scm As described in the manual. Thanks [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2018-12/msg00055.html [2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2019-06/msg00259.html