Deleting a specific system generation

Deleting a specific system generation

[Zack Weinberg]

What is the preferred way to delete one specific system generation
(that I know to be broken)?  `delete-generations` only understands
arguments meaning "older than this date" as far as I can tell, and
I find the variety of profiles defined in various places quite
bewildering so I hesitate to just start messing with the stuff in
/var/guix/profiles.

Thanks,
zw

Re: Deleting a specific system generation

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

Hi Zack,

> `delete-generations` only understands
> arguments meaning "older than this date" as far as I can tell

Following the references in the manual I end up at:

        • _Integers and comma-separated integers_.  Both patterns denote
          generation numbers.  For instance, ‘--list-generations=1’
          returns the first one.

          And ‘--list-generations=1,8,2’ outputs three generations in
          the specified order.  Neither spaces nor trailing commas are
          allowed.

Have you tried 'sudo guix system delete-generations N'?  It seemed to work for me.

Kind regards,

T G-R

Sent on the go.  Excuse or enjoy my brevity.

Re: Deleting a specific system generation

[Zack Weinberg]

On Mon, Oct 21, 2024, at 4:56 PM, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote:
>> `delete-generations` only understands
>> arguments meaning "older than this date" as far as I can tell
...
> Have you tried 'sudo guix system delete-generations N'?  It seemed to 
> work for me.

Yes, that works for me.

> Following the references in the manual

How did you get there from this?

‘delete-generations’
     Delete system generations, making them candidates for garbage
     collection (*note Invoking guix gc::, for information on how to run
     the “garbage collector”).

     This works in the same way as ‘guix package --delete-generations’
     (*note ‘--delete-generations’: Invoking guix package.).  With no
     arguments, all system generations but the current one are deleted:

          guix system delete-generations

     You can also select the generations you want to delete.  The
     example below deletes all the system generations that are more than
     two months old:

          guix system delete-generations 2m

I don't see any relevant links.  (Perhaps the problem is that one of
these links _is_ relevant but doesn't look like it?  In particular,
the link to "Invoking guix package" goes to the _top_ of that very
long page; it might be that there's something relevant _somewhere_
in there, but I really shouldn't have to hunt for it.  In my opinion,
the full syntax of the `delete-generations' command should be documented
right there in the documentation of `delete-generations' itself.)

zw