Re: Best base system for Guix

[Alexander Asteroth <alexander.asteroth@h-brs.de>]

Hi Florian,

On Fri, Nov 12 2021, 17:48:36, "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> wrote:

> Hello Alexander.  I’m glad booting works.
>
> On Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 04:16:17PM +0100, Alexander Asteroth wrote:
>> I created a second EFI partition for
>> the guix grub (to be sure it doesn't make my Debian installation
>> unbootable)
>
> Debian and Guix can share an EFI system partition, otherwise I’m not
> sure if dual boot is possible.  Except probably with (menu-entry …).

of course dual boot is not possible this way. But the idea was to make
sure nothing unplanned happens to the system I currently use everyday.

>> Of course now the next issues arise, like "how do I configure postfix
>> under guix"
>
> If you want Postfix to run an e-mail server: Is this on a VPS, so you
> have a static IP?
>
> AFAIK there is not yet a postfix service for Guix, only Exim and
> OpenSMTPd.  But maybe someone has written a Guix channel for Postfix
> outside the main Guix repo.
>
> I’m not sure, but maybe it would be better to configure Postfix with
> traditional configuration files and only start it automatically on
> boot with a custom Shepherd service (see the syslogd example at
> `info "(guix) Shepherd Services"`).  Or imitate the Exim service in
> the Guix repo.
>

I can probably live with nullmailer. I'll have a look at it.

>> and what is the right way to make my keyboard layout known
>> to the system (so far I have added a few lines (a variant) to the
>> /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us file, wich is now hidden somewhere in the
>> guix-store)?
>
> You need to change the value of (keyboard-layout …) in your operating
> system configuration (by default /etc/config.scm).
>
> See the examples at `info "(guix) Keyboard Layouts"`.

I'm not using a predifined layout from /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols but
some self-defined variant based on us. This means I have to edit a file
under /usr/share but that was the way it was done since I work with X11
(back in the 90s) and so far I haven't found a replacement for it that
allows to fully define own keyboardlayouts.

>> Guix configuration is really very different from other
>> *ix'es. Are packages configurable at all without writing scheme-modules
>> for them? An where would this configuration go?
>
> In Scheme code in your operating system configuration
> (/etc/config.scm) or in your package manifest, you can add your own
> package records in-place or you can use a module in which you defined

But in the end the applications depend on configurartion files that need
to be placed somewhere (even if generated or parameterized) by some
scheme code.

> them.  It is probably best to look at the packages in the Guix repo.
> For example you can use the command `guix edit hello` to look at GNU
> Hello’s package.  The Guix cookbook contains a packaging tutorial.

I'll have a look at that. Before I encountered these issues I saw it but
didn't understand it's importance.

Cheers,
Alex