Re: Repair / reinstall Guix package manager (foreign distro)

[david larsson <david.larsson@selfhosted.xyz>]

There has been some issues with getting the symlinks ~/.guix-profile and 
~/.config/guix/current right on a foreign distro for me and some other 
users, but Im not sure whether this is a Guix problem, or a 
misunderstanding by the users. A good explanation of guix profiles is 
here: 
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/561093/what-is-the-difference-between-guix-profile-and-config-guix-current 
and also make sure to read about the guix pull -p option. After that I 
think you can fix your problem by fixing the symlinks.

Reg reinstall if you wont just fix the symlinks, deleting /gnu/store and 
/var/guix, along with any profiles such as ~/.guix-profile and 
~/.config/guix/ folders I think is enough to begin a reinstall (possibly 
also /etc/guix/profiles/config.scm or similar if they exist - but not 
sure).

Having a reinstall options or similar for guix-install.sh would be nice, 
but I dont think it exists (btw. it shouldn't be too hard to check the 
bash source for this and see if it exists or not).

Best regards,
David

On 2020-06-28 10:22, Zelphir Kaltstahl wrote:
> Hi Guix Users!
> 
> I would like to repair or reinstall my Guix package manager
> installation, because it seems broken and nothing I tried fixes the 
> problem.
> 
> The problem:
> 
> ~~~~
> xiaolong@xlx200:~/Downloads$ guix pull
> Migrating profile generations to 
> '/var/guix/profiles/per-user/xiaolong'...
> guix pull: error: symlink: File exists:
> "/var/guix/profiles/per-user/xiaolong/current-guix"
> ~~~~
> 
> It started appearing, when I once ran `guix pull` and `guix package -u`
> as `root` user, to update my locales in the root profile.
> 
> Now I can only do a `guix pull` as `root` user, no longer as normal 
> user.
> 
> I've tried deleting the symlink, thinking: "Well if the error is, that 
> a
> file exists in that place, it probably wants to write there and refuses
> to overwrite. I'll delete it for you then." That results in another 
> error:
> 
> ~~~~
> xiaolong@xlx200:~/Downloads$ guix pull
> Migrating profile generations to 
> '/var/guix/profiles/per-user/xiaolong'...
> Updating channel 'guix' from Git repository at
> 'https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git'...
> guix pull: error: Git error: failed open -
> '/home/xiaolong/.cache/guix/checkouts/pjmkglp4t7znuugeurpurzikxq3tnlaywmisyr27shj7apsnalwq/.git/FETCH_HEAD'
> is locked: Permission denied
> ~~~~
> 
> I can get it back to previous state by running `guix pull` as `root`
> user again, but it does not fix the original problem then.
> 
> Now I've gone 1 step further in frustration and deleted the whole
> `/var/guix/profiles/per-user/xiaolong` folder. OK, now guix does not
> know about any installed packages any more and the error becomes:
> 
> ~~~~
> xiaolong@xlx200:~$ guix pull
> guile: warning: failed to install locale
> Migrating profile generations to 
> '/var/guix/profiles/per-user/xiaolong'...
> Updating channel 'guix' from Git repository at
> 'https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git'...
> guix pull: error: Git error: failed open -
> '/home/xiaolong/.cache/guix/checkouts/pjmkglp4t7znuugeurpurzikxq3tnlaywmisyr27shj7apsnalwq/.git/FETCH_HEAD'
> is locked: Permission denied
> ~~~~
> 
> So I a basically giving up now and want to reinstall. I downloaded the
> install script `guix-install.sh` from the website and ran it:
> 
> ~~~~
> xiaolong@xlx200:~/Downloads$ sudo bash guix-install.sh
> 
> (... big GUIX logo here ...)
> 
> This script installs GNU Guix on your system
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/
> Press return to continue...
> [1593338927.330]: Starting installation (So 28. Jun 12:08:47 CEST 2020)
> [1593338927.333]: [ PASS ] verification of required commands completed
> [1593338927.364]: [ INFO ] init system is: systemd
> [1593338927.368]: [ INFO ] system is x86_64-linux
> [1593338928.075]: [ PASS ] Release for your system:
> guix-binary-1.1.0.x86_64-linux
> [1593338928.077]: [ INFO ] Downloading Guix release archive
> guix-binary-1.1.0.x86_64 100%[==================================>]
> 70,14M  4,27MB/s    in 21s
> guix-binary-1.1.0.x86_64 100%[==================================>]
> 833  --.-KB/s    in 0s
> [1593338949.457]: [ PASS ] download completed.
> [1593338950.341]: [ PASS ] Signature is valid.
> [1593338959.807]: [ PASS ] unpacked archive
> [1593338959.808]: [ FAIL ] A previous Guix installation was found.
> Refusing to overwrite.
> ~~~~
> 
> "OK OK! I'll uninstall the previous one!"
> 
> But how do I do it exactly? Or is there a flag or anything I can give 
> to
> make it overwrite the previous installation?
> 
> Regards,
> Zelphir