Re: 'guix system vm' questions

[David Craven <david@craven.ch>]

@myglc2 the simplest workaround to this issue is to add -device
virtio-rng-pci to your qemu flags and patch lsh to use /dev/hwrng in
the /bin/lsh-make-seed file I linked to in a previous reply.

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 6:00 PM,  <help-guix-request@gnu.org> wrote:
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>    1. Re: 'guix system vm' questions (myglc2)
>    2. Re: 'guix system vm' questions (myglc2)
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> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2016 09:47:42 -0400
> From: myglc2 <myglc2@gmail.com>
> To: help-guix@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: 'guix system vm' questions
> Message-ID: <86mvly6dfl.fsf@gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Court?s) writes:
>
>> myglc2 <myglc2@gmail.com> skribis:
>>
>>> Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> writes:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 10:10:35AM -0400, Thompson, David wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 2:57 AM, myglc2 <myglc2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> > I have a headless server running Guix/Debian 8.3 on which I would like
>>>>> > to run some guix vms. So far, I have a script (see mkvm.sh, attached)
>>>>> > that runs a single vm. It has some issues:
>>>>> >
>>>>> > 1) lsh-service hangs waiting for keystrokes on the QEMU console
>>>>>
>>>>> LSH needs to be initialized with a key on first boot, which is why you
>>>>> need to type to create entropy.  This sucks for automation, so I would
>>>>> recommend OpenSSH instead, but we don't have an openssh-service yet.
>>>>
>>>> In your operating system configuration, you can pass 'initialize? #f' to
>>>> lsh-service to skip the SSH seed and host-key initialization. You will
>>>> need to initialize the LSH service later, before you can use it.
>>>
>>> I tried that and ... lsh spun looking for a seed file advising me to run
>>> 'lsh-make-seed', and then stopped.
>>
>> Yeah this is expected: lshd won?t start if it cannot find a seed;
>> eventually, the Shepherd?
>>
>>> Service SSH-daemeon has started.
>>> No seed file. Please create on by running
>>> lwh-make-seed -o "/var/spool/lsh/yarrow-seed-file".
>>> lshd: No rendomness generator available.
>>> Service ssh-daemon has been disabled.
>>>   (Respawning too fast.)
>>
>> ? disables it.
>>
>>> v1 login: root
>>> root@v1 ~# lsh-make-seed
>>> -bash: lsh-make-seed: command not found
>>
>> I guess ?lsh-service-type? should be changed to extend
>> ?profile-service-type? such that this command is available.  WDYT?
>
> Well I can't see how it will help in my use case. I can't think of why
> it would be useful in practice, since lsh-make-seed is already being
> called with --sloppy by 'ssh-service initialize? #t'.
>
> The only reasons I can think of are ...
>
> - to enable a user at the console to manually reproduce what
>    'ssh-service initialize? #t' does, and
>
> - to avoid it being reported as a bug
>
> ... which is why I didn't report it as a bug.
>
> Re my use case, am I correct in believing that the only way to address
> it is to enhance lsh-service with an alternative initialization scheme
> that does not require console input?
>
> If so, maybe we should rename the current initialize to ...
>
> INITIALIZE-REQUIRING-CONSOLE-INPUT?
>
> ... and add a new one named ...
>
> INITIALIZE-UNATTENDED?
>
> WDYT? - George
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2016 09:53:28 -0400
> From: myglc2 <myglc2@gmail.com>
> To: help-guix@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: 'guix system vm' questions
> Message-ID: <86inwm6d5z.fsf@gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain
>
> David Craven <david@craven.ch> writes:
>
>> So I packaged rng-tools and created a shepherd service, but I realized
>> that the service needs to be started before the activation part of the
>> lsh service. What's the best way to do this?
>>
>> https://git.lysator.liu.se/lsh/lsh/blob/master/src/lsh-make-seed.c#L1075
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 8:23 PM, David Craven <david@craven.ch> wrote:
>>> HW_RANDOM_VIRTIO is enabled in the default kernel.
>>>
>>> Starting the vm like this enables the hwrng:
>>> /gnu/store/3rqbwx34kfa789jbywfbxl90nids08cf-run-vm.sh -device virtio-rng-pci
>>> and it works as can be verified by
>>> cat /dev/hwrng
>>>
>>> The only missing components from what I can tell is packaging rng-tools
>>> and adding a service to add /dev/hwrng to the entropy pool on boot.
>>>
>>> https://git.kernel.org/cgit/utils/kernel/rng-tools/rng-tools.git/
>>>
>>>> We should look into QEMU's VirtIO RNG, which could help here:
>>>> http://wiki.qemu-project.org/Features-Done/VirtIORNG
>
> This sounds great. I see you submitted patches. Am I correct in thinking
> that the next step is to add an lsh-option option that uses rmg-tools
> instead of lsh-make-seed to set the yarrow seed?
>
> TIA - George
>
>
>
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