Is it possible to system reconfigure from a local guix git?

Is it possible to system reconfigure from a local guix git?

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

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Hi,

I'm still using i686 to be able to know when it's broken and if
time permits, to send patches to fix some of the issues affecting me.

Since patches often take a long time to be reviewed (we probably need
more reviewers), I was wondering if it was possible to reconfigure from
a local Guix git checkout.

Running a system straight from a git repository would also enable me to
improve my workflow and test better the patches.

The issue I have here is that I can easily do that:
> $ guix shell -D guix
> $ ./pre-inst-env guix system build system.scm

But I didn't find a way to make sudo and pre-inst-env work together.

I've tried things like that:
> $ sudo -E ./pre-inst-env guix system reconfigure system.scm

And it reconfigured my system but I then have a broken guix
installation:
> $ guix shell -D guix
> ;;; Failed to autoload symlink-spec-option-parser in (guix scripts
> pack): ;;; Throw to key `record-abi-mismatch-error' with args
> `(abi-check "~a: record ABI mismatch; recompilation needed"
> (#<record-type <svn-reference>>) ())'.

What is the correct way (if any) to do something like that?

PS: There is also normally a way to recover from that since I was
    helped on IRC to recover and at some point it worked.
    So I'll try various things like 'rm -rf ~/.cache/guile/ccache/ &&
    guix pull' until I find how to recover.

Denis.

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Re: Is it possible to system reconfigure from a local guix git?

[Felix Lechner via]

Hi Denis,

On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 4:16 PM Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli
<GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org> wrote:
>
> But I didn't find a way to make sudo and pre-inst-env work together.

There probably is a way but due to a home folder that is a FUSE
filesystem, I cannot use sudo at all. I use 'guix deploy' [1] even
though there are some security disadvantages. Maybe that works for
you, too.

Kind regards
Felix

[1] https://codeberg.org/lechner/system-config/src/branch/history/host/lechner-desktop/machine.scm

Re: Is it possible to system reconfigure from a local guix git?

[Andreas Enge]

Hello,

my reply does not quite answer your question, but here is how I do it
by circumventing the problem... I have never quite understood sudo and
always used su.

Am Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 01:15:37AM +0200 schrieb Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli:
> > $ guix shell -D guix
> > $ ./pre-inst-env guix system build system.scm

So in a first step, if I am limited to sudo, I do "sudo su -" to
become root.

Then either I use a git checkout of guix as root, or I cd to my
regular user's git checkout. Then ./pre-inst-env guix system reconfigure ...

Andreas

Re: Is it possible to system reconfigure from a local guix git?

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

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On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 09:03:51 +0200
Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> wrote:

> So in a first step, if I am limited to sudo, I do "sudo su -" to
> become root.
Thanks a lot, that seems to work: I don't have the same errors anymore
(I've other errors related to i686 though).

Denis.

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Re: Is it possible to system reconfigure from a local guix git?

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi Denis,

Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org> writes:

> On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 09:03:51 +0200
> Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> wrote:
>
>> So in a first step, if I am limited to sudo, I do "sudo su -" to
>> become root.
> Thanks a lot, that seems to work: I don't have the same errors anymore
> (I've other errors related to i686 though).

You can also use

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
sudo -E ./pre-inst-env guix system reconfigure ...
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

To avoid bad surprises, make sure that you've run

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
./configure --localstatedir=/var --sysconfdir=/etc
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

before that.

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim