I installed GuixSD on my laptop

I installed GuixSD on my laptop

[nee]

Hello everyone, a few months ago I installed GuixSD 0.12 in a luks
encrypted partition on my laptop. Here are some problems I have with it
so far.

1. How do I set the locale in the login manager and Grub.
I have a German keyboard, but the system boots with an english
key-setting and only changes when I enter gnome or xfce (I had to set
them up via their guis). Is there any GuixSD-level setting for this? The
install manual didn't mention it.
It's a real pain to enter my password like this.

2. I have to enter my disk-encryption-password two times on every boot.
Once before grub and one time when shepard boots up. I have my
bootloader on a diferent drive, might this be related to the issue?

3. When I enter one wrong password on the first disk-encryption-prompt
(before grub) I get thrown into a grub console. It should give me a few
more tries.

4. ibus is not working in xfce. I copied the paths from the popup of
ibus-setup into my .bashrc, but even after login out, I couldn't get any
program to actually use ibus. I also had no success in gnome later. I
was trying to get Japanease input to work.

5. I've been using thunderbird with Enigmail previously. I think I read
on irc that icedove would be the way to go, and that it hasn't been
packaged yet.
Enigmail is really neat, so I wouldn't want to be without it.

6. My laptop has an Nvidia and an Intel graphics card, how do I force
intel to be active?
The Nouveau drivers can't do any 3d stuff at a bearable framerate,
probably due to it's dependence on blobs.
I wonder if Intel would perform better. How would I switch between them
on GuixSD?

7. I have this wifi stick:
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usb
Is the driver already packaged for guixsd?

* An unrelated story:
I had to install GuixSD twice, because I forgot to punch "(dependencies
mapped-devices)" into my file-system configuration.
So shepard would not boot up properly and after some time I got a guile
debug repl.
I see that this is my own fault, for not reading the docs properly.
I hope the new ncurses installer will help to prevent such mistakes.

* Not a problem: Touchpad works different
My first observation was that the touchpad was not working correctly.
The touchpad only works for mouse movement.
Clicking by tapping any point on the pad does not work.
Scrolling by moving down/up the right edge does not work.

I use the hardware buttons below it for clicking, but I wonder, aren't
there some laptops without those?
Later I found out that scrolling works with two fingers and this whole
setup is actually much better, since I do way less misclicks that way!

* xf86-input-synaptics?
Because I previously tried nixos I directly installed
xf86-input-synaptics with my installation. I never tried to use my
system without it. If it is required it should be mentioned in the docs.

Have a nice day, and happy hacking on GuixSD!

Re: I installed GuixSD on my laptop

[ng0]

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Hi nee, I just have a quick reply to some of the points below.

Good night!

nee transcribed 2.9K bytes:
> Hello everyone, a few months ago I installed GuixSD 0.12 in a luks
> encrypted partition on my laptop. Here are some problems I have with it
> so far.
> 
> 1. How do I set the locale in the login manager and Grub.
> I have a German keyboard, but the system boots with an english
> key-setting and only changes when I enter gnome or xfce (I had to set
> them up via their guis). Is there any GuixSD-level setting for this? The
> install manual didn't mention it.
> It's a real pain to enter my password like this.

This is a feature-bug in SLiM and whatever this other login manager is called.
I reported a bug on this, and a partial workaround exists. I hope that
lightdm can deal with this better. More on the solution either tomorrow or
by someone else in the meantime.

> 2. I have to enter my disk-encryption-password two times on every boot.
> Once before grub and one time when shepard boots up. I have my
> bootloader on a diferent drive, might this be related to the issue?

This also happens when it is just on one drive. I think there exist
cryptsetup solutions with detached heads etc which make this easier
to deal with. I haven't tested it in practice.

> 3. When I enter one wrong password on the first disk-encryption-prompt
> (before grub) I get thrown into a grub console. It should give me a few
> more tries.
> 
> 4. ibus is not working in xfce. I copied the paths from the popup of
> ibus-setup into my .bashrc, but even after login out, I couldn't get any
> program to actually use ibus. I also had no success in gnome later. I
> was trying to get Japanease input to work.

Can you report a bug on this or check if there's a bug already reported for it?
I'm also looking to update the whole lot of XFCE, but this might not solve
your problem.

> 5. I've been using thunderbird with Enigmail previously. I think I read
> on irc that icedove would be the way to go, and that it hasn't been
> packaged yet.
> Enigmail is really neat, so I wouldn't want to be without it.
>
> 6. My laptop has an Nvidia and an Intel graphics card, how do I force
> intel to be active?
> The Nouveau drivers can't do any 3d stuff at a bearable framerate,
> probably due to it's dependence on blobs.
> I wonder if Intel would perform better. How would I switch between them
> on GuixSD?
> 
> 7. I have this wifi stick:
> https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usb
> Is the driver already packaged for guixsd?
> 
> * An unrelated story:
> I had to install GuixSD twice, because I forgot to punch "(dependencies
> mapped-devices)" into my file-system configuration.
> So shepard would not boot up properly and after some time I got a guile
> debug repl.
> I see that this is my own fault, for not reading the docs properly.
> I hope the new ncurses installer will help to prevent such mistakes.
> 
> * Not a problem: Touchpad works different
> My first observation was that the touchpad was not working correctly.
> The touchpad only works for mouse movement.
> Clicking by tapping any point on the pad does not work.
> Scrolling by moving down/up the right edge does not work.
> 
> I use the hardware buttons below it for clicking, but I wonder, aren't
> there some laptops without those?
> Later I found out that scrolling works with two fingers and this whole
> setup is actually much better, since I do way less misclicks that way!
> 
> * xf86-input-synaptics?
> Because I previously tried nixos I directly installed
> xf86-input-synaptics with my installation. I never tried to use my
> system without it. If it is required it should be mentioned in the docs.
> 
> Have a nice day, and happy hacking on GuixSD!
> 
> 

-- 
ng0
OpenPG: A88C8ADD129828D7EAC02E52E22F9BBFEE348588

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Re: I installed GuixSD on my laptop

[someone]

On Sat, 3 Jun 2017, nee wrote:

> Hello everyone, a few months ago I installed GuixSD 0.12 in a luks
> encrypted partition on my laptop. Here are some problems I have with it
> so far.
>
> 1. How do I set the locale in the login manager and Grub.
> I have a German keyboard, but the system boots with an english
> key-setting and only changes when I enter gnome or xfce (I had to set
> them up via their guis). Is there any GuixSD-level setting for this? The
> install manual didn't mention it.
> It's a real pain to enter my password like this.
>
> 2. I have to enter my disk-encryption-password two times on every boot.
> Once before grub and one time when shepard boots up. I have my
> bootloader on a diferent drive, might this be related to the issue?

Someone might have better suggestions but until then here's my thoughts on 
it:

There's some step-by-step instructions for setting up a grub-password and 
then setting a path to a luks keyfile in grub on a system using Libreboot 
and Parabola here:
https://wiki.selfhosted.xyz/doku.php?id=it:computer_setup:encrypted_parabola_installation_guide#boot_configuration

This could possibly be adapted to GuixSD. In short the steps involved 
(without setting up grub's password authentication) are:

-generate key and add to your luksdrive
   dd bs=512 count=4 if=/dev/urandom of=/etc/my_cryptkey iflag=fullblock
   cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sda1 /etc/my_cryptkey
-Regenerate initramfs (using the mkinitcpio bash-script)
   zile /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
   FILES="/etc/my_cryptkey"
   mkinitcpio -p linux-libre (or linux-libre-lts or linux-libre-grsec or all of them)
-Then add a configuration line to your grub config's default menu-entry on 
the linux-line:
   linux /boot .... cryptkey=rootfs:/etc/my_cryptkey

For details on setting up the password etc see the link above.

Hopefully, there is a way to define this in a guile system declaration.

>
> 3. When I enter one wrong password on the first disk-encryption-prompt
> (before grub) I get thrown into a grub console. It should give me a few
> more tries.
>
> 4. ibus is not working in xfce. I copied the paths from the popup of
> ibus-setup into my .bashrc, but even after login out, I couldn't get any
> program to actually use ibus. I also had no success in gnome later. I
> was trying to get Japanease input to work.
>
> 5. I've been using thunderbird with Enigmail previously. I think I read
> on irc that icedove would be the way to go, and that it hasn't been
> packaged yet.
> Enigmail is really neat, so I wouldn't want to be without it.
>
> 6. My laptop has an Nvidia and an Intel graphics card, how do I force
> intel to be active?
> The Nouveau drivers can't do any 3d stuff at a bearable framerate,
> probably due to it's dependence on blobs.
> I wonder if Intel would perform better. How would I switch between them
> on GuixSD?
>
> 7. I have this wifi stick:
> https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usb
> Is the driver already packaged for guixsd?
>
> * An unrelated story:
> I had to install GuixSD twice, because I forgot to punch "(dependencies
> mapped-devices)" into my file-system configuration.
> So shepard would not boot up properly and after some time I got a guile
> debug repl.
> I see that this is my own fault, for not reading the docs properly.
> I hope the new ncurses installer will help to prevent such mistakes.
>
> * Not a problem: Touchpad works different
> My first observation was that the touchpad was not working correctly.
> The touchpad only works for mouse movement.
> Clicking by tapping any point on the pad does not work.
> Scrolling by moving down/up the right edge does not work.
>
> I use the hardware buttons below it for clicking, but I wonder, aren't
> there some laptops without those?
> Later I found out that scrolling works with two fingers and this whole
> setup is actually much better, since I do way less misclicks that way!
>
> * xf86-input-synaptics?
> Because I previously tried nixos I directly installed
> xf86-input-synaptics with my installation. I never tried to use my
> system without it. If it is required it should be mentioned in the docs.
>
> Have a nice day, and happy hacking on GuixSD!
>

Re: I installed GuixSD on my laptop

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

someone@selfhosted.xyz skribis:

> Someone might have better suggestions but until then here's my
> thoughts on it:
>
> There's some step-by-step instructions for setting up a grub-password
> and then setting a path to a luks keyfile in grub on a system using
> Libreboot and Parabola here:
> https://wiki.selfhosted.xyz/doku.php?id=it:computer_setup:encrypted_parabola_installation_guide#boot_configuration
>
> This could possibly be adapted to GuixSD. In short the steps involved
> (without setting up grub's password authentication) are:
>
> -generate key and add to your luksdrive
>   dd bs=512 count=4 if=/dev/urandom of=/etc/my_cryptkey iflag=fullblock
>   cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sda1 /etc/my_cryptkey
> -Regenerate initramfs (using the mkinitcpio bash-script)
>   zile /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
>   FILES="/etc/my_cryptkey"
>   mkinitcpio -p linux-libre (or linux-libre-lts or linux-libre-grsec or all of them)
> -Then add a configuration line to your grub config's default
> menu-entry on the linux-line:
>   linux /boot .... cryptkey=rootfs:/etc/my_cryptkey
>
> For details on setting up the password etc see the link above.

Adding the cryptsetup passphrase in a file in the initrd is doable (with
the initrd living on the encrypted file system).  Sounds like a good
idea that we could implement in GuixSD (although care must be taken not
to store the passphrase file in the store.)

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: I installed GuixSD on my laptop

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On Sat, Jun 03, 2017 at 10:53:24PM +0200, nee wrote:
> Hello everyone, a few months ago I installed GuixSD 0.12 in a luks
> encrypted partition on my laptop. Here are some problems I have with it
> so far.
>
> […]
> 
> 5. I've been using thunderbird with Enigmail previously. I think I read
> on irc that icedove would be the way to go, and that it hasn't been
> packaged yet.
> Enigmail is really neat, so I wouldn't want to be without it.
>

I tried to package Evolution once, but I had problems: It only worked
when it was the last installed package. I believe it’s not the only
GNOME package sufering from this issue. I still want to try again when
I have some more time to learn Guix…

That said, I switched to Mutt and am happy with it. Seems much better
than Enigmail because it makes clear which parts of a message are
signed. I’m not sure though if Thunderbird Enigmail can spit out this
information somehow too.

> 
> * An unrelated story:
> I had to install GuixSD twice, because I forgot to punch "(dependencies
> mapped-devices)" into my file-system configuration.
> So shepard would not boot up properly and after some time I got a guile
> debug repl.
> I see that this is my own fault, for not reading the docs properly.
> I hope the new ncurses installer will help to prevent such mistakes.
> 

Probably this should be verified by Guix before GuixSD gets installed.

> * Not a problem: Touchpad works different
> My first observation was that the touchpad was not working correctly.
> The touchpad only works for mouse movement.
> Clicking by tapping any point on the pad does not work.
> Scrolling by moving down/up the right edge does not work.
> 
> I use the hardware buttons below it for clicking, but I wonder, aren't
> there some laptops without those?
> Later I found out that scrolling works with two fingers and this whole
> setup is actually much better, since I do way less misclicks that way!
> 
> * xf86-input-synaptics?
> Because I previously tried nixos I directly installed
> xf86-input-synaptics with my installation. I never tried to use my
> system without it. If it is required it should be mentioned in the docs.
>

No. Libinput should be used. Not Synaptics. Synaptics is
obsolete. Libinput does not get used on my GuixSD GNOME either though;
I believe it still uses Synaptics. My GNOME also does not use Wayland
yet, but Xfce does not even support Wayland AFAIK…

Regards,
Florian

Re: I installed GuixSD on my laptop

[Arun Isaac]

> 4. ibus is not working in xfce. I copied the paths from the popup of
> ibus-setup into my .bashrc, but even after login out, I couldn't get any
> program to actually use ibus. I also had no success in gnome later. I
> was trying to get Japanease input to work.

Yes, ibus wasn't working when last I checked too. But, I haven't really
explored the problem in any detail, yet.

> 5. I've been using thunderbird with Enigmail previously. I think I read
> on irc that icedove would be the way to go, and that it hasn't been
> packaged yet.
> Enigmail is really neat, so I wouldn't want to be without it.

Yes, there is no icedove package yet. But, if interested, you could
contribute a patch adding icedove. Or, you could wait for someone else
to do it.

Re: I installed GuixSD on my laptop

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

nee <nee@cock.li> skribis:

> 1. How do I set the locale in the login manager and Grub.
> I have a German keyboard, but the system boots with an english
> key-setting and only changes when I enter gnome or xfce (I had to set
> them up via their guis). Is there any GuixSD-level setting for this? The
> install manual didn't mention it.
> It's a real pain to enter my password like this.

As ng0 mentioned, we’ll have to move away from SLiM (the login manager)
to get proper i18n.

As for GRUB, it’s really a bug on our side that we should fix.  Please
report it to bug-guix@gnu.org so we don’t lose track of it.

> 3. When I enter one wrong password on the first disk-encryption-prompt
> (before grub) I get thrown into a grub console. It should give me a few
> more tries.

I agree; not sure why GRUB behaves this way nor whether this is
configurable.

> 4. ibus is not working in xfce. I copied the paths from the popup of
> ibus-setup into my .bashrc, but even after login out, I couldn't get any
> program to actually use ibus. I also had no success in gnome later. I
> was trying to get Japanease input to work.

I think IBus was previously reported to work fine in GNOME; maybe 宋文武
or Ricardo can comment?  Otherwise it’s worth a bug report too.

> 6. My laptop has an Nvidia and an Intel graphics card, how do I force
> intel to be active?

Dunno.

> The Nouveau drivers can't do any 3d stuff at a bearable framerate,
> probably due to it's dependence on blobs.

Nouveau is free software and doesn’t rely on non-free firmware, AFAIK.

> I wonder if Intel would perform better. How would I switch between them
> on GuixSD?

Dunno!

> 7. I have this wifi stick:
> https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usb
> Is the driver already packaged for guixsd?

I think so, it’s an Atheros chip:

  https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Hardware-Considerations.html

> * An unrelated story:
> I had to install GuixSD twice, because I forgot to punch "(dependencies
> mapped-devices)" into my file-system configuration.
> So shepard would not boot up properly and after some time I got a guile
> debug repl.
> I see that this is my own fault, for not reading the docs properly.
> I hope the new ncurses installer will help to prevent such mistakes.

Yeah, I agree that this API makes it too easy to shoot oneself in the
foot.

No idea about the touchpad.

Thanks for your feedback!

Ludo’.