Re: First installation - Questions

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hello Sohom,

Sohom Bhattacharjee <soham.bhattacharjee15@gmail.com> skribis:

> I recently attempted to install GUIX SD on my laptop. After about 5
> initial iterations I was finally able to get GUIX SD on my laptop so
> that it just worked. I used the basic config for my first try and I kept
> on modifying that config for the subsequent 'init's. Here is my current
> config: https://gitlab.com/83bytes/guix/blob/master/myConfig.scm
>
>
> 1. Is there any way to remove all desktop services and run it in a
> do-it-yourself mode (much like with Arch Linux) i.e. login into terminal
> and startx to start the Xorg ?

I think we don’t have a way to get ‘startx’ yet (help welcome!), so for
now, the most DIY-mode we have is shown in the “lightweight-desktop”
example with ratpoison & co.:

  https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Using-the-Configuration-System.html#System-Services

> 2. From reading the docs I figure that we are supposed to write
> config.scm for everything including web servers. This also means doing a
> `guix system reconfigure` after every change (even the trivial ones like
> setting up another virtual host etc). Is there any way I can *not* do
> this and run certain services like Apache or cron without declaring them
> in the config ?

You can always run them “by hand”, but then you don’t get the advantages
of using GuixSD.

What makes you wary of running “guix system reconfigure”?

> 3. If i do not declare a service in the config and i go on using it
> traditionally (assuming we can do that); then does it mean that this
> undeclared service will get lost upon a `guix system reconfigure` ?

If you run it with custom scripts and the likes, “guix system” will not
know about it so it won’t get lost.

However, things like user accounts manually added will get lost on the
next reboot.

> 4. How do I modify elogind settings ? ( i want to disable power button
> and lid button controls )

elogind has a wealth of settings:

  https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Desktop-Services.html#index-elogind_002dservice

You can modify them using ‘modify-services’, as in:

  (operating-system
    ;; …
    (services (modify-services %desktop-services
                (elogind-service-type config =>
                                      (elogind-configuration
                                        (inherit config)
                                        (handle-power-key 'suspend))))))

> 5. When i do a `guix size <package>` the sizes are generally huge (1.3Gb
> for icecat in my system). Why is it so ?

Arun explained this, hope that clarifies a bit.

> 6. Is there a list of which packages are available as rebuilt
> "substitutes" ( is this correct ?? ) and which ones need to be built
> locally ?

To complement Arun’s answer, “guix build PKG --dry-run” shows you what
would be built and what would be downloaded as pre-built binaries.

HTH!

Ludo’.