to save my Guix System installation

to save my Guix System installation

[Gottfried]

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Hi,

I have on one harddisk Guix installed,
on a second harddisk GNUinOS.

I want to reinstall GNUinOS

and may be later on the same harddisk,
on which Guix resides, reduce the size of the harddisk
and install Trisquel on a second partition on it.

To be on the save side
I would like to copy... my Guix to a separate harddisk
in order not to loose it.

So that I can in the worst case replace it/I don’t know what to call it

What are the options.

I was reading the cookbook, but the procedure is not clear to me.

What are the commands to copy/replicate my Guix System installation
to an external harddisk (via USB connected) and later in case
recopy it.


Kind regards

Gottfried


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Re: to save my Guix System installation

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

Hi Gottfried,

yes, making a backup is good.

You will want to backup the Guix configuration files and your data.

So probably this means you should copy /etc/config.scm and the files in
your home directory.

You could plug in an ext4-formatted external disk and copy the files
with the “cp -a” command.  Or learn to use a complicated backup tool
like borg, which other pages on the web explain better than I can.

However, note that installing Guix on the same disk as another operating
system will only be easy if you are using grub-efi-bootloader and if
your computer has an OS selection tool built in or if you have installed
something like rEFInd.

Regards,
Florian

Re: to save my Guix System installation

[Felix Lechner via]

Hi Florian,

On Tue, May 23, 2023 at 9:33 AM pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)
<pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> wrote:
>
> yes, making a backup is good.

I don't think Gottfried is making a backup. I think he is leaving us.

We failed a beginner who is absolutely dedicated to free software.

Kind regards
Felix

Re: to save my Guix System installation

[Skyler]

If you declared all your packages in the file that contains your operating-system definition then you can just save that file and point a new guix installation towards it to restore your configuration. If you've run imperative commands (for example, `guix install some-package`) then you'll need to record those separately, `guix package -I` will list all of the packages that you've installed imperatively. I'm not sure about other imperative actions, I'm obsessive about doing things declaratively exactly because it makes this kind of situation easy to deal with (I have a habit of bungling up my machines and needing to install them fresh). If you can share more details about how you have configured your guix system then I might be able to offer more specific advice.

Of course, this will do nothing to save your data, if you have data documents or other files in your home directory that are not system configuration then those will need to be saved separately in either case.

Sincerely,
Skyler

------- Original Message -------
On Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023 at 3:50 AM, Gottfried <gottfried@posteo.de> wrote:


> Hi,
> 
> I have on one harddisk Guix installed,
> on a second harddisk GNUinOS.
> 
> I want to reinstall GNUinOS
> 
> and may be later on the same harddisk,
> on which Guix resides, reduce the size of the harddisk
> and install Trisquel on a second partition on it.
> 
> To be on the save side
> I would like to copy... my Guix to a separate harddisk
> in order not to loose it.
> 
> So that I can in the worst case replace it/I don’t know what to call it
> 
> What are the options.
> 
> I was reading the cookbook, but the procedure is not clear to me.
> 
> What are the commands to copy/replicate my Guix System installation
> to an external harddisk (via USB connected) and later in case
> recopy it.
> 
> 
> Kind regards
> 
> Gottfried

Re: to save my Guix System installation

[Gottfried]

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Hi,

I am not planing to leave Guix.

But with Guix I can’t use my Scanner
and I need my scanner regularly
so I have to install a second distro like GNUinOS and/or Trisquel
on my laptop
in order to scan documents.

I installed already GNUinOS, but since one year it is impossible to 
update anything,
so I got the advice from the Trisquel Forum to reinstall it.

I couldn’t install Trisquel last year on my new laptop
because of new hardware. (Tuxedo laptop),
so I got from the Trisquel forum (from AndyPrough) an advice
to install GNUinOS, which is also GNU but builds on Devuan,
even though it is not listed yet on the FSF as GNU distro.

Kind regards

Gottfried


Am 23.05.23 um 19:17 schrieb Felix Lechner:
> Hi Florian,
> 
> On Tue, May 23, 2023 at 9:33 AM pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)
> <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> wrote:
>>
>> yes, making a backup is good.
> 
> I don't think Gottfried is making a backup. I think he is leaving us.
> 
> We failed a beginner who is absolutely dedicated to free software.
> 
> Kind regards
> Felix

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Re: to save my Guix System installation

[Felix Lechner via]

Hi Gottfried,

On Wed, May 24, 2023 at 9:16 AM Gottfried <gottfried@posteo.de> wrote:
>
> I am not planing to leave Guix.

Thank you for writing that. I am glad to read it.

> But with Guix I can’t use my Scanner
> and I need my scanner regularly
> so I have to install a second distro like GNUinOS and/or Trisquel
> on my laptop
> in order to scan documents.

You may have to spend 60 euros on a new scanner, but I believe we can
get something to work for you. My three scanners are fifteen years
old. All of them are supported by the SANE project. [1]

Please send me a private email with a summary of your findings to
date. (I faintly remember an earlier thread.) I scan all the time and
will walk you through it.

> I installed already GNUinOS, but since one year it is impossible to
> update anything,

I have not used GNUinOS, but in the regular distro universe—i.e.
without the GNU Shepherd—avoiding systemd for philosophical reasons or
because the principal author has a brisk personality will not make
your life any easier.

> so I got the advice from the Trisquel Forum to reinstall it.

Trisquel is potentially a good choice for you, as long as your
hardware does not require any proprietary firmware in order to
function safely and reliably. Unfortunately, that is a painful subject
and also off-limits for this list. In order to investigate your case,
please also send me the output for

  $ lspci
  $ lsusb
  $ cat /proc/cpuinfo

If you are not too queasy about privacy, you can also upload your
hardware details to this service [2] or perhaps just send the output
of 'hw-probe' [3] to me privately (probably without "--upload").

Kind regards
Felix

[1] http://sane-project.org/sane-supported-devices.html
[2] https://linux-hardware.org/?d=Guix
[3] https://packages.guix.gnu.org/packages/hw-probe/

Re: to save my Guix System installation

[Soren Stoutner via]

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Gottfried,

One way to do this is to use images to copy the entire hard drive or individual partitions to 
a new location, which preserves all your data and configurations.  I have done that many 
times using Clonezilla.

https://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live.php[1]

On Tuesday, May 23, 2023 6:09:23 PM MST Skyler wrote:
> If you declared all your packages in the file that contains your
> operating-system definition then you can just save that file and point a
> new guix installation towards it to restore your configuration. If you've
> run imperative commands (for example, `guix install some-package`) then
> you'll need to record those separately, `guix package -I` will list all of
> the packages that you've installed imperatively. I'm not sure about other
> imperative actions, I'm obsessive about doing things declaratively exactly
> because it makes this kind of situation easy to deal with (I have a habit
> of bungling up my machines and needing to install them fresh). If you can
> share more details about how you have configured your guix system then I
> might be able to offer more specific advice.
> 
> Of course, this will do nothing to save your data, if you have data
> documents or other files in your home directory that are not system
> configuration then those will need to be saved separately in either case.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Skyler
> 
> ------- Original Message -------
> 
> On Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023 at 3:50 AM, Gottfried <gottfried@posteo.de> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I have on one harddisk Guix installed,
> > on a second harddisk GNUinOS.
> > 
> > I want to reinstall GNUinOS
> > 
> > and may be later on the same harddisk,
> > on which Guix resides, reduce the size of the harddisk
> > and install Trisquel on a second partition on it.
> > 
> > To be on the save side
> > I would like to copy... my Guix to a separate harddisk
> > in order not to loose it.
> > 
> > So that I can in the worst case replace it/I don’t know what to call it
> > 
> > What are the options.
> > 
> > I was reading the cookbook, but the procedure is not clear to me.
> > 
> > What are the commands to copy/replicate my Guix System installation
> > to an external harddisk (via USB connected) and later in case
> > recopy it.
> > 
> > 
> > Kind regards
> > 

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Re: to save my Guix System installation

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi Felix,

Felix Lechner via <help-guix@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi Florian,
>
> On Tue, May 23, 2023 at 9:33 AM pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)
> <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> wrote:
>>
>> yes, making a backup is good.
>
> I don't think Gottfried is making a backup. I think he is leaving us.
>
> We failed a beginner who is absolutely dedicated to free software.

Let's try to provide value in our replies, or at least stay positive
:-).  It seems Gottfried is looking for a way to keep their Guix System
available along other GNU/Linux systems.

As Florian already mentioned, the challenge will be in configuring the
bootloader.  For moving Guix itself, you could copy its root file system
using 'cp -a', or opt to reinstall from your config.scm as already
mentioned up-thread.  Sadly, for the complex part (the bootloader
configuration), I'll leave it to someone more knowledgeable than myself
to provide concrete answers, but I believe you'll want to read on
something called multi-boot.  There's a GRUB example here [0].

Good luck!

[0]  https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/Multi_002dboot-manual-config.html

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim

Re: to save my Guix System installation

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

Hi all,

Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> writes:
> For moving Guix itself, you could copy its root file system
> using 'cp -a', or opt to reinstall from your config.scm as already
> mentioned up-thread.

I strongly suggest the reinstall option.  Copying all with “cp -a”
works, but is a waste.

sudo mount /dev/sdx1 /mnt
sudo cp -a /etc/config.scm /mnt/
sudo cp -a /home /mnt/
sync

is a simple means of backup.  Reinstall can be done with

sudo mount /dev/sdx1 /mnt
sudo cp -a /mnt/etc/config.scm /etc/config.scm
sudo cp -a /mnt/home /

Then adjust the file-systems field in /etc/config.scm and reconfigure.

> Sadly, for the complex part (the bootloader
> configuration), I'll leave it to someone more knowledgeable than myself
> to provide concrete answers, but I believe you'll want to read on
> something called multi-boot.  There's a GRUB example here [0].

I believe configuring GRUB for dual boot is difficult.  It would be
simpler if the computer already offers boot selection e.g. when pressing
the DEL key at startup.  That would allow choosing between multiple EFI
installations.

I think GRUB multi-boot is a boot protocol that cannot easily be
configured in Guix.  Other distros use GRUB menu-entries with chainload
for dual booting.

Regards,
Florian

Re: to save my Guix System installation

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

"pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> writes:
> sudo mount /dev/sdx1 /mnt

P.S. Note that the path to the other disk will not be sdx.  Adjust this
to the name of the other disk.  Needless to say, it is very important
the mount command does not fail.

Regards,
Florian