bug#27684: Can't build disk-images or vm-images on core-updates

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:

> On Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 04:02:14PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> The log shows that building the disk-image derivation starts with:
>> 
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>> creating raw image of 102400.00 MiB...
>> Formatting '/gnu/store/yv5r65584aaml86hc0xrgyffnp70ri36-disk-image', fmt=raw size=107374182400
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>> 
>> That’s a lot, no?
>
> Yes, I specified it manually while debugging.
>
>> Regardless, memory consumption in the VM is not supposed to be
>> proportional to the size of the image being created.
>
> Indeed, the problem exists also when I don't pick a size manually.
>
>> The allocation failure happens while copying files:
>
> [...]
>
>> Does that work on previous master with Linux-libre 4.12.0 (current
>> master is at 4.12.2)?  (This would allow us to determine if this is an
>> ext4 bug, who knows…)
>
> Yes, I tested with a variety of kernels and on the master branch as
> well.
>
>> If it does, then the only other issue I can think of is if Guile itself,
>> while running ‘copy-recursively’ from (guix build utils), eats memory
>> proportional to the number of files, leading to an OOM condition.
>> However the kernel message don’t report it as an OOM, AFAICS.
>
> I'm wondering if it's related to the Guile 2.0 / 2.2 mismatch in the
> initrd, discussed previously:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-07/msg00220.html
>
> Guile 2.0 would need to rebuild all the 2.2 modules it finds.

This works for me now:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ ./pre-inst-env guix system disk-image gnu/system/install.scm 
*** output flushed ***
$ file /gnu/store/37ppm08ggdds3i06h4la0wdzilcnladm-disk-image
/gnu/store/37ppm08ggdds3i06h4la0wdzilcnladm-disk-image: DOS/MBR boot sector
$ git describe
v0.13.0-1474-gef03d8dc3
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Could you check if it works for you?

It’s a much smaller image than what you tried (1G vs. 102G).

Ludo’.