Xdm trisquel login fails after installing gajim on a fresh guix install (works after rolling back)

Xdm trisquel login fails after installing gajim on a fresh guix install (works after rolling back)

[David Lecompte]

Hi all,

I installed Guix on Trisquel 9 on an X200 following advice from the
section 2 of the manual. I ran the script mentioned in the first note
with sudo and made the guess that it replaces the steps from sections
2.1 up to 2.5 included, even though that is not mentioned.

Then, following advice from section 2.6 and 2.7, I installed the Guix
packages glibc-locales, fontconfig, font-adobe-source-han-sans and nss-
certs, and I installed the Trisquel package nscd. Then I ran guix pull,
guix package -u, sudo -i guix pull and systemctl restart guix-
daemon.service.

I understand one needs to run guix pull and guix package -u
periodically, but I don't know whether the last two are also needed as
frequently, I couldn't find any recommendation on that in the manual.

Anyway, the actions and time it took looked similar to when I installed
Guix on another computer running Trisquel 9 before, and everything was
working ok.

One small remark though: at various times, there are messages
recommending to set PATH, GUIX_PATH or GUIX_LOCPATH but these variables
are actually set automatically as part of the installation process, so
these messages are a bit misleading.

Then, when I asked to install the Guix gajim package, to my surprise,
the output said it needs to download more than 100 MB and a crazy number
of packages were processed, among which texlive or xorg, it took at lest
as long as all the previous steps and both cores of my CPU were at 100%
for more than 30 minutes. I'd love to provide some log of the output but
I didn't redirect it to a file and I don't know if that is kept
somewhere.

When it was finished, I logged out and logged in using the default
Trisquel xdm, my password is accepted but after maybe 30s, I get back to
the login screen and any further attempt to log in has the same result.

I logged in a console terminal, and since I did not know what to do, I
rolled back and then I could log in via xdm normally again.

I don't know whether I did something wrong when installing Guix or if
there is an issue with the gajim package, or with installing it in Guix
now, or the combination of both. My Trisquel 9 install is very recent
and Trisquel is highly stable, so I doubt there is anything wrong with
it.

I am happy that rolling back removes the problem but I'd like to find
out how to use guix without breaking trisquel.

Thanks in advance for the help.

David.

Re: Xdm trisquel login fails after installing gajim on a fresh guix install (works after rolling back)

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira via]

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Hi there,


Em 02/06/2021 05:16, David Lecompte escreveu:
> One small remark though: at various times, there are messages
> recommending to set PATH, GUIX_PATH or GUIX_LOCPATH but these variables
> are actually set automatically as part of the installation process, so
> these messages are a bit misleading.

Indeed they are. It seems that the environment with which Guix daemon was called didn't emerge from "/etc/profile.d/guix.sh" , but ultimately it seems to work OK for the user since theirs did pass through that script.

> Then, when I asked to install the Guix gajim package, to my surprise,
> the output said it needs to download more than 100 MB and a crazy number
> of packages were processed, among which texlive or xorg, it took at lest
> as long as all the previous steps and both cores of my CPU were at 100%
> for more than 30 minutes. I'd love to provide some log of the output but

It might not be enough, but did you enable build substitutes when you were asked by the guix installation script?

I said that it might not be enough because, if there is no substitute for a given package definition, Guix will try to build it anyways.

> I didn't redirect it to a file and I don't know if that is kept
> somewhere.

In general, you don't need to look those up unless a build process insists on failing or has another bug of some sort. The process I did came up to find those is somewhat complex, but still if you do want to follow mine, please read on.

Most logs are kept at "/var/log/guix/drvs", but I do agree that you might need to do some searching, like this (lines starting with "$" are command lines):

$ LC_TIME=C guix package -l | grep '^[^[:space:]]'

Assuming a Guix upgrade was successful and was what caused an issue, look at the previous generation from the current one, and take the date column (since columns are separated with tabs, we want the second). However if the upgrade was not finished/registered, take the date column of the current generation.

With that said, do something like this:

$ find "/var/log/guix" -type f -newermt "[Insert date here, without these brackets]" -print

This will print a list of files (`-type f`) that were modified after said time (`-newermt`). Since "/var/log/guix" holds logs, these are all log files.

This process doesn't work well if there are other users of Guix in the same computer (including root), since all logs are printed.

Again, this is my way of doing it, other Guix users may have better options.

> When it was finished, I logged out and logged in using the default
> Trisquel xdm, my password is accepted but after maybe 30s, I get back to
> the login screen and any further attempt to log in has the same result.

I think this is related to the XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable. While "/etc/profile.d/guix.sh" does have some directions to set it, I had to put the following into my ~/.profile file in order to login:

---- Start of text ----
export XDG_DATA_DIRS="/usr/local/share:/usr/share/${XDG_DATA_DIRS:+:}$XDG_DATA_DIRS"
---- End of text ----

I did not have time to research ways to avoid this, but I guess that I'll have to fiddle with "/etc/profile.d/guix.sh" itself in order to test it more effectively.


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Re: Xdm trisquel login fails after installing gajim on a fresh guix install (works after rolling back)

[David Lecompte]

On Wed, 2 Jun 2021 10:30:17 -0300
"Adonay Felipe Nogueira via" <help-guix@gnu.org> wrote:

> It might not be enough, but did you enable build substitutes when you were asked by the guix installation script?

Actually, I don't remember seeing that question. Maybe they are disabled then, I will enable them.

> In general, you don't need to look those up unless a build process insists on failing or has another bug of some sort. The process I did came up to find those is somewhat complex, but still if you do want to follow mine, please read on.
>
> Most logs are kept at "/var/log/guix/drvs", but I do agree that you might need to do some searching, like this (lines starting with "$" are command lines):

Thanks for the great tips, very helpful.

There are 138 files more recent than the generation before last. The names of the .drv.bz2 files apparently include package names but I see nothing with xorg or texlive, even in the older ones, while I am sure I saw them listed on the output.

Could that be visible inside of other .drv files in /var/log/guix?

> I think this is related to the XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable. While "/etc/profile.d/guix.sh" does have some directions to set it, I had to put the following into my ~/.profile file in order to login:
>
> ---- Start of text ----
> export XDG_DATA_DIRS="/usr/local/share:/usr/share/${XDG_DATA_DIRS:+:}$XDG_DATA_DIRS"
> ---- End of text ----

Excellent, it solves the problem.

> I did not have time to research ways to avoid this, but I guess that I'll have to fiddle with "/etc/profile.d/guix.sh" itself in order to test it more effectively.

The line there is a little different but I am not able to say whether that should do the same or not. I guess I should spend more time on the bash manual, this is perhaps one of the most useful manual to spend time on.

Anyway, thanks for the very good help !

David.