Re: Installing custom kernel on Intel NUC using USB and no network(newbie question)

[swedebugia <swedebugia@riseup.net>]

Hi Will

I never played with guix archive so I will just comment on what I advise 
you to do.

On 2019-07-13 18:41, Will Schenk wrote:
> I'm playing around with guixsd and am really impressed with the work so 
> far!  I've been unpacking the installer and configuration trying to 
> understand how it works.  so if there's a more straightforward way to do 
> this that would be great also, but I have some questions on how guix 
> itself works.
> 
> I'm trying to install guix on a IntelNUC where I don't have access to a 
> wired connection.  This requires me to use the iwlwifi-firmware.

I never used guix with wifi. Is there a free iwl driver in linux-libre? 
If not I advise you to buy a free software compatible wifi-stick. See 
h-node.org.

> 
> I have a docker container on my OSX machine that installs guix on a 
> debian image, and from there I add another channel to guix that has the 
> standard linux kernel.  From there I build an installation iso that I 
> copy to USB key, boot the nuc off of, and am able to install the system 
> over WiFi and everything is great.

This sounds overly complicated if all you want to do is try guix system 
on the NUC.

> 
> My plan was to then change my /etc/config.scm file to include the 
> packages that I built in the docker container to provision the system 
> with a different kernel.  What I can't figure out is how to copy the 
> package over in a way that guix system reconfigure can see them just 
> using a USB stick.

Building a custom kernel is not something I would recommend beginners of 
Guix System. I have only seen a few do it and they had many months of 
experience.

...
> 
> Question 3:
> 
> It seems crazy to me that I'm downloading everything over and over.  At 
> the office (where I was playing with this) we have fiber, but right here 
> we have a terrible network connection so downloading multiple times is 
> painful.  Is there a way to setup a local mirror of the builds (I'm 
> waiting for ipfs backing for this obvious.)

It seems you have access to fast wired internet. I advise you to take 
the NUC somewhere and plug it in and wait for it to download everything. 
Guix is somewhat (maybe 25% compared to parabola and 35% compared to 
Debian) more bandwidth hungry than your average distribution from my 
experience.

> Anyway, what I really dont understand is the guix archive behavior and 
> why that didn't work, and how to reference the packages once they've 
> been imported into either my profile and especially the config.scm.

Guix archive is not used a lot to my knowledge. I would avoid it as a 
beginner. Running guix publish to move packages is much more user friendly.

> 
> Thanks, and I'm very excited to be playing with guix!

Cool! Hope you find a solution that works for you.

-- 
Cheers
Swedebugia