problem with commit abae042

problem with commit abae042

[Mathieu Othacehe]

I think there's a problem with commit abae042 :

* profile-grub-entries become unused and is still present.
* When using switch-generation, operating-system-bootcfg is not
* called. So, the kernel arguments are not correctly set (--root,
* --system and --load), and the resulting entries in grub.cfg are broken.

Mathieu

Re: problem with commit abae042

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Hi,

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 20:17:59 +0200
Mathieu Othacehe <m.othacehe@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think there's a problem with commit abae042 :
> 
> * profile-grub-entries become unused and is still present.

I know, I can't remove it without review, far too dangerous.

> * When using switch-generation, operating-system-bootcfg is not
> * called. So, the kernel arguments are not correctly set (--root,
> * --system and --load), and the resulting entries in grub.cfg are broken.

Yes, indeed.  I'm working on it.  If I can't get it to work today I'll back it out again.

Too bad this is such a huge changeset - it's quite difficult to find a safe path.

Do you have an idea how to fix it? 

Would it be good to press forward with the other patches or should I back it out?

Re: problem with commit abae042

[Mathieu Othacehe]

> Too bad this is such a huge changeset - it's quite difficult to find a safe path.

Yes, and my split between commit isn't great, sorry about that.

> Do you have an idea how to fix it? 

Nothing trivial. Plus I didn't notice before that
profile-bootloader-entries and operating-system-bootcfg had parts that
could have been factorized.

>
> Would it be good to press forward with the other patches or should I back it out?

Maybe the safer approch would be to revert this commit. I'll publish new
patches and try to find a better approach for
profile-bootloader-entries, if you're ok ?

Thank you,

Mathieu

bootloader and kernel arguments "--root", "--system", "--load"

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Ok, I'm in the process of reverting the patches to grub.

------

Problem analysis:

- (profile-boot-parameters ...) doesn't pick up the correct kernel-arguments.  It's reading them from a parameters file for the system generation back then, for example from /gnu/store/x8ymiksnhfyvjdi8ms38ysc4yr92lyk9-system/parameters, which contains:

(boot-parameters
  (version 0)
  (label "GNU with Linux-Libre 4.5.1 (beta)")
  (root-device "/dev/sda1")
  (kernel "/gnu/store/h977riqrp7c3w2v0mcpp48ldcapy09gx-linux-libre-4.5.1")
  (kernel-arguments ("crashkernel=256M" "modprobe.blacklist=pcspkr,snd_pcsp" "quiet" "acpi_osi=Linux" "clocksource=acpi_pm"))
  (initrd (string-append "/gnu/store/8w1abpwlhnilibiamcp6j01rhjh9k5ix-base-initrd" "/initrd")))

, which indeed doesn't contain the correct kernel arguments for it to boot.

Why not?  Shouldn't we just store the correct arguments in there eventually?

Those kernel arguments should include (in the front):

linux-arguments
        let root = (boot-parameters-root-device params) or #f
        let root-device = (if (bytevector? root) (uuid->string root) root)
        let system = "/gnu/store/x8ymiksnhfyvjdi8ms38ysc4yr92lyk9-system" in
        "--root=<root-device>"
        "--system=<system>"
        "--load=<system>/boot"
.

Or is it something grub-specific?

Or is it because we don't know system's own hash value in order to be able to write it there?

Would it be good to (later) replace the kernel-arguments accessor by a procedure that also takes system and root and prepends them on-the-fly?

i.e.

(define (boot-parameters-all-kernel-arguments params system root)
  (cons
    (string-append "--root=" root)
    (cons
      (string-append "--system=" system)
      ... load etc
      (boot-parameters-kernel-arguments params))))

... and only use this one, never boot-parameters-kernel-arguments anywhere else?

Re: bug#26339: problem with commit abae042

[Leo Famulari]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 534 bytes --]

On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 08:17:59PM +0200, Mathieu Othacehe wrote:
> 
> I think there's a problem with commit abae042 :
> 
> * profile-grub-entries become unused and is still present.
> * When using switch-generation, operating-system-bootcfg is not
> * called. So, the kernel arguments are not correctly set (--root,
> * --system and --load), and the resulting entries in grub.cfg are broken.

This should be reverted immediately, since the master branch is what
users get from `guix pull`, so we really must not break it.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --]

Re: bug#26339: problem with commit abae042

[Danny Milosavljevic]

It has been reverted.