Re: GNU Guix 1.4.0rc1 available for testing!

["pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de>]

Hello Svante,

Svante Signell <svante.signell@gmail.com> writes:
> What about hurd?

Hurd can be used with QEMU on Linux-based Guix System; see the
childhurd section in the manual.  However, I tried and somewhat failed
to run on my real hardware (a Beebox mini PC): When booting, the Hurd
runs an rc script which freezes.

I make /dev/sda1 an ext2 filesystem and use a slightly modified
/run/current-system/profile/share/guile/site/3.0/gnu/system/examples/bare-hurd.scm
as the template for a manual installation (with the usual steps from
the Guix manual).  Note: e2fsprogs is needed for manual installation
but is not installed in the rc1 installer image; a bug
<https://issues.guix.gnu.org/58239>.

(Thank you for making me notice the bug!)

After these preparations, I run:

guix system init /mnt/etc/config.scm /mnt --target=i586-pc-gnu --skip-checks

Then a last step: Open `guix repl` and run

,use (gnu build hurd-boot)
(make-hurd-device-nodes "/mnt")

It installs and runs somewhat iff I edit the GRUB boot options (with
the E key in the boot menu) to boot from sd0s1 instead of hd0s1, on
every boot.  If I forget to do this, I need to run `fsck.ext2
/dev/sda1` from the installer image before I can boot the already
installed Hurd again.

Anyway, it starts /gnu/store/38sb8h…-system/rc, which freezes.

Also note that the Hurd release shipped with Guix has known security
issues (see Sergey Bugaev’s writeups; there has not yet been a new mig
release since and Guix would need it for newer Hurd, I think).

Note: These instructions are the result of trial and error.  I am not a
hurd user (yet) and don’t know details.

Regards,
Florian