Hello Miles,

Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> writes:

> On 5/9/19 1:03 PM, Christopher Baines wrote:

[...]

>> So, whereas I think things like systemd are aware of sysvinit scripts in
>> the usual place,

no: rc script are **wrapped** to service units by systemd-sysv-generator
at boot or systemd service reload

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233581 is a good summary
also https://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/debugging-systemd-sysv-init-compat

that's not the solution, a full rewrite of rc script is often needed

>> the shepherd is completely unaware.
>
> So... that kind of leaves out automatically setting up servers. I mean, 
> most server software still comes with init files, maybe with systemd or 
> other init files, but generally make install sets things up so that 
> servers start & run.

I'm an absolute beginner here, but AFAIU...

each Guix service comes with a service definition written in guix
language, as documented
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/en/html_node/Defining-Services.html

e.g. OpenSSH definition is:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/services/ssh.scm#n263

guix services definition and activation is "another story" compared to
what happens in other init systems

...and yes, we (including me) have to study Guile and Guix to be able to
define guix services... and that's a lot of fun :-)

> So how does GUIX support this?

AFAIK Guix does not support wrapping rc scripts

> And, for that matter, how does GUIX handle any kind of post-install 
> configuration?  E.g., the kind of things that debconf might be used
> for.

declaratively, via
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/en/html_node/System-Configuration.html

that's much more than
apt+debconf+devops(ansible,puppet,cfengine,younameit)

[...]

HTH! Gio'

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures