Re: Who has had success installing a Guix system on arm?

[Timothy Sample <samplet@ngyro.com>]

Hi Jesse,

Jesse Gibbons <jgibbons2357@gmail.com> writes:

> Has anyone in this mailing list successfully used the Guix system on
> an armhf or aarch64 computer?

I don’t have a lot of details for you, but I can confirm that I’ve used
Guix on three armhf boards: BeagleBone Black, veyron_speedy (ASUS C201),
and veyron_minnie (ASUS C100PA).

For the BeagleBone, it required using an older version of U-Boot.
Upstream U-Boot has stopped supporting it.  Our package patches support
back in, but it didn’t work for me.  I believe I’ve tried to use Guix on
it three times and only succeeded once.  If you have a BeagleBone Black
and want to use Guix, let me know.  I could track down my notes and see
if I can still produce a usable image.

For the Veyron boards, it is starting to work quite well.  The current
version of U-Boot can boot these boards, but you can also boot U-Boot
from the stock firmware (which is Depthcharge).  This is needed because
the Guix initial RAM disk is too big for Depthcharge to boot directly.

The point I’m trying to make is that Guix can be made to work on armhf,
but it is not at all smooth sailing.  There are usually one or two
things that need fixing before it will work.  IME, we are close to
having a decent experience, but we’re definitely not there yet.  The
saving grace is that Guix makes working on these things pretty painless.


-- Tim