Re: Guix package manager installed

[Steve George <steve@futurile.net>]

Hi Gottfried,

In an earlier email you said you're running Trisequel: so you have Guix 
installed as a package manager on top of it.

That means when you installed Guix package manager your distributions 
'service manager' was used to install the Guix daemon.

As Trisequel is an Ubuntu derivative [0] I assumed it was running 
Systemd to manage services. Systemd uses the systemctl command: so you 
should be able to run that command as root.

I don't know enough about Trisequel to help you figure out which service 
manager you're running. You'll need to ask on the Trisequel forums for 
help on which service manager you have.

You can try doing some research on service managers and systemd - the 
Arch Wiki has good links [1]

Best of luck!


[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisquel
[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Init#Service_managers and 
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd



On 02/11/2022 19:59, Gottfried wrote:
>   Hi Steve,
> 
> thanks for explanation
> I am hacking on the basics.
> 
> 
> I tried:
> 
> sudo systemctl status guix-daemon.service
> 
> but it said:
> 
> gfp@Tuxedo ~$ sudo systemctl status guix-daemon.service
> Password:
> sudo: systemctl: command not found
> 
> systemctl ?
> 
> Kind regards
> 
> Gottfried
> 
> 
> 
> Am 02.11.22 um 08:53 schrieb Steve George:
>> Hi,
>>
>> The key concept to understand is that Guix runs a build daemon and 
>> package database (/gnu/store) on the machine which multiple 'normal' 
>> users can use. You can see it with:
>>
>>    sudo systemctl status guix-daemon.service
>>
>> The manual is trying to explain that you use the root user to update 
>> the guix daemon itself. So you do this:
>>
>>    sudo -i pull guix
>>    sudo systemctl restart guix-daemon.service
>>
>> The second step is that for each of your normal users, you then use 
>> guix. For example, to update guix for my main user and to install a 
>> package:
>>
>>    # open a normal terminal
>>    $ guix pull
>>    $ guix upgrade
>>    $ guix install tmux
>>
>> If you inspect the guix-daemon service the log will show your user 
>> connecting to the service and the guix-daemon handling the actions 
>> (e.g. download the software):
>>
>>    sudo systemctl status guix-daemon.service
>>
>> If you had multiple users then each individual user would do guix pull 
>> to update their definitions of what applications/versions are 
>> available. Each user has their own record (called a profile) of which 
>> applications they've installed.
>>
>> The advantage of using the single daemon, is that if multiple users 
>> installed a program (e.g. tmux) then it would only be downloaded once.
>>
>> Unless you use your root user regularly you don't need to install 
>> applications as the root user. I personally only run a small number of 
>> commands as root so I don't install any Guix software as root.
>>
>> Hope that makes it easier to understand!
>>
>>
>> On 29/10/2022 21:57, Gottfried wrote:
>>> Hi Guixers,
>>>
>>> I am very thankful for all the Guixers who worked and are working for 
>>> Guix, also for the manual...
>>>
>>> because against all hope I was able to install the Guix package 
>>> manager on another laptop on top of Trisquel on the basis of the manual.
>>>
>>> I am wondering myself that I was able to understand the manual and 
>>> step by step I did what it said.
>>> Even sometimes there were messages of failures but at the end 
>>> everything worked. (I had to look up for solutions  on the web 
>>> several times, but at the end it was successful)
>>>
>>> 1.  As far as I understand it I have to do
>>>
>>> guix pull
>>>
>>> and a
>>>
>>> guix package -u
>>>
>>> but no
>>>
>>> sudo guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm
>>>
>>> because there is no /etc/config.scm file
>>>
>>> Is that right?
>>>
>>>
>>> Where is the relevant file for the guix package manager I installed?
>>>
>>>
>>> 2.  Do I regularly have to do a "sudo guix pull" for root?
>>>
>>> or is it enough that I did it once for setting up guix?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Kind regards
>>>
>>> Gottfried
>>>
>>
>