From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Christopher Allan Webber Subject: Hosting a GuixSD server on commodity hosting platforms, a journey Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2016 13:59:07 -0600 Message-ID: <878ts212ic.fsf@dustycloud.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:58882) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cBoYZ-0008Oa-DH for help-guix@gnu.org; Tue, 29 Nov 2016 14:59:12 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cBoYY-0001GE-Ff for help-guix@gnu.org; Tue, 29 Nov 2016 14:59:11 -0500 Received: from dustycloud.org ([2600:3c02::f03c:91ff:feae:cb51]:49610) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cBoYY-0001G1-BI for help-guix@gnu.org; Tue, 29 Nov 2016 14:59:10 -0500 Received: from oolong (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dustycloud.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id B12A22672C for ; Tue, 29 Nov 2016 14:59:07 -0500 (EST) List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-guix-bounces+gcggh-help-guix=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Help-Guix" To: help-guix Hello all, I tried getting GuixSD working on Rackspace Cloud last night. Ludovic suggested I write to the list to talk about my success/failure, regardless of whether I made it or not. My goal is to get GuixSD hosted reliably on *some* commodity hosting platform, whether it's Rackspace or Linode or Digital Ocean or something. This thread will document my success/failure. Well, last night as my first go, I didn't succeed. I decided to try to see if I could upload an image generated with "guix system vm-image" and then upload it and see if I could get it to boot from somewhere in the UI. Here are the things I looked at: - https://support.rackspace.com/how-to/preparing-an-image-for-import-into-the-rackspace-opencloud/ Which just says that the file should be in the VHD file format and not a lot else (my image didn't exceed limits). I converted it like: qemu-img convert /tmp/guix-qemu-image.qcow2 -O vpc /tmp/guix-qemu-image.vhd - Trying to figure out how to upload and activate it, I took a look at: https://support.rackspace.com/how-to/install-the-swiftly-client-for-cloud-files/ https://support.rackspace.com/how-to/use-swiftly-to-upload-an-image/ AFAICT, all these links say are how to upload an image to the OpenStack Cloud Files containers. Okay, well by the time I read this I had already uploaded it via the web UI, so I don't see how it would be different, with the exception that I didn't use the container name "uploaded-images", which it doesn't seem to explicitly require. So effectively, my image was uploaded and resulted in the same place afaict, though I just used the web UI rather than the API. - Next I tried to boot it. I went to "Servers -> Cloud Servers" from the dropdown menu at the top, then clicked "Create Server". I clicked "Saved"... but there's nothing there. What am I doing wrong? I'm not totally sure... I feel like I'm navigating a jungle out here in the OpenStack / Rackspace docs. Here's one thing I found: https://community.rackspace.com/products/f/25/t/7186 So I probably need to execute this "import" command. I guess that's what's next... What happens if that doesn't work? I've been looking at how the Nix community does things. Most of the guides seem to involve taking an existing distribution and converting it. https://nixos.org/wiki/Install_NixOS_on_Linode https://nixos.org/wiki/Install_NixOS_on_Rackspace_Cloud_Servers That seems really goofy, but okay, I guess we could do it. Does anyone else know more about these things than I do? Your feedback and experience most welcome! - Chris