Trying to install Guix SD - grub-install fails

Trying to install Guix SD - grub-install fails

[David Lecompte]

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Hello all,

I never used Guix SD, only Guix on a foreign distro.

I want to install a system on an external SSD so that I can boot my PC in case my default boot disk would have problems (I have my data on other disks in this PC) and I decided to try with Guix SD.

With the guided installation in graphic mode, when I get to the point where I say to install Guix on a whole disk and I have selected it, the installer goes back to the first step, asking whether I want to install Guix SD with the graphic installer or shell commands, so the graphic install seems not to work.

Then I decided to try the installation with shell commands.

My desktop is a D8 with a blobless coreboot + seabios.

On my external SSD connected via USB and recognized as /dev/sdf (I have 6 internal disks, /dev/sda is the boot disk, then I have /dev/sdb to /dev/sde and /dev/sdg, not sure why the external SSD got put in the middle):

I created the following partitions and fs (DOS partition table):
/dev/sdf1: 1G formatted as ext4, for /boot, marked as bootable
/dev/sdf2: extended partition
/dev/sdf5: 922G formatted as btrfs, for /
/dev/sdf6: 8G, for swap

I have put labels on /dev/sdf1 and /dev/sdf5, I mounted /dev/sdf5 at /mnt, created /mnt/boot and mounted /dev/sdf1 at /mnt/boot, did swapon for /dev/sdf6. Then I launched herd, copied config.scm, edited it, and launched guix system init, using the commands advised in the manual.

After a while (lots of things were worked on), I have:
---quote start---
guix system: error: '/gnu/store/xxx-grub-2.04/sbin/grub-install --no-floppy target=i386-pc --bot-directory /mnt/boot /dev/sdf1' exited with status 1; output follows:

Installing of i386-pc platform.
/gnu/store/xxx-grub-2.04/sbin/grub-install: warning: File system 'ext2' doesn't support embedding.
/gnu/store/xxx-grub-2.04/sbin/grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged...
/gnu/store/xxx-grub-2.04/sbin/grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.
--- quote end ---


And then I get a shell prompt again.

My config.scm is:

(use-modules (gnu) (gnu system nss))
(use-service-modules desktop xorg)
(use-package-modules certs gnome)

(operating-system
  (host-name "albert")
  (timezone "Europe/Paris")
  (locale "fr_FR.utf8")

  (keyboard-layout (keyboard-layout "fr"))
  (bootloader (bootloader-configuration
                (bootloader grub-bootloader)
                (target "/dev/sdf1")
                (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout)))

  (file-systems (append
                  (list (file-system
                          (device (file-system-label "guix-root"))
                          (mount-point "/")
                          (type "btrfs"))
                        (file-system
                          (device (file-system-label "guix-boot"))
                          (mount-point "/boot")
                          (type "ext4")))
                  %base-file-systems))

  (users (cons (user-account
                 (name "david")
                 (comment "David")
                 (group "users")
                 (supplementary-groups '("wheel" "netdev"
                                         "audio" "video")))
               %base-user-accounts))

  (packages (append (list
                     nss-certs
                     gvfs)
                    %base-packages))

  (services (append (list (service mate-desktop-service-type)
                          (set-xorg-configuration
                            (xorg-configuration
                             (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout))))
                    %desktop-services))

  (name-service-switch %mdns-host-lookup-nss))
                           

I manually copied the file so there could be typos.

Did I do something wrong in the partition/filesystem choices, in the installation procedure or in the config.scm?

Thanks,
David.

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Re: Trying to install Guix SD - grub-install fails

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

Hello David.

On Mon, Jun 06, 2022 at 12:48:01PM +0000, David Lecompte wrote:
> (operating-system
>   (host-name "albert")
>   (timezone "Europe/Paris")
>   (locale "fr_FR.utf8")
> 
>   (keyboard-layout (keyboard-layout "fr"))
>   (bootloader (bootloader-configuration
>                 (bootloader grub-bootloader)
>                 (target "/dev/sdf1")
>                 (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout)))

The target should be /dev/sdf, but why the GUI installer does not work
I do not know.  Perhaps download the latest image if you wanted the GUI.

Regards,
Florian

Re: The service trying to install Guix SD - grub-install fails

[David Lecompte]

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Le mardi 07 juin 2022 à 13:27 +0200, pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) a
écrit :
> The target should be /dev/sdf, but why the GUI installer does not
> work
> I do not know.  Perhaps download the latest image if you wanted the
> GUI.

Thanks, it worked !

(I mean the shell install, for the GUI, I had donwloaded the latest
image already so I did not retry).

After reboot, I ran "guix pull" and "sudo guix system reconfigure
/etc/config.scm", it seems to have worked but at the end there is a
message that puzzles me a bit, saying:

shepherd: Service term-console could not be started.
To complete update, run "herd restart SERVICE" to stop, update and
restart all services that were not restarted automatically.
Run "herd status" to see the list of services of your system.

(first line is in English, other lines are in French like my system, so
I translated to English by myself, might not be exactly what one gets
directly in English).

When I run "herd status" or "herd restart term-console", I see:
error: connect: /run/user/1000/shepherd/socket: No file or folder of
this type

(again, I am translating from French).

Is there anything else that needs to be fixed?

Thanks,
David.

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Re: The service trying to install Guix SD - grub-install fails

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

Hello David.  All looks good.

On Tue, Jun 07, 2022 at 05:11:45PM +0000, David Lecompte wrote:
> shepherd: Service term-console could not be started.
> To complete update, run "herd restart SERVICE" to stop, update and
> restart all services that were not restarted automatically.
> Run "herd status" to see the list of services of your system.

You probably don’t care about term-console, so you can ignore this
message.


> (first line is in English, other lines are in French like my system, so
> I translated to English by myself, might not be exactly what one gets
> directly in English).
> 
> When I run "herd status" or "herd restart term-console", I see:
> error: connect: /run/user/1000/shepherd/socket: No file or folder of
> this type
> 
> (again, I am translating from French).

Sorry for the late reply.  This “herd status” would need to be run as
root (e.g. with sudo like “sudo guix system …”).  The reason is that
shepherd can manage both daemons of the system and daemons of the user
(see Guix Home in the manual; for example, the home-mcron service).
When you run “herd status” without sudo, it thinks you want the status
of the shepherd user daemons, but you have not setup shepherd to run
user daemons.


> Is there anything else that needs to be fixed?
> 
> Thanks,
> David.

No, your system is set up fine.

Regards,
Florian

Re: Trying to install Guix SD - grub-install fails

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On Tue, Jun 07, 2022 at 01:27:51PM +0200, pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) wrote:
> Hello David.
> 
> On Mon, Jun 06, 2022 at 12:48:01PM +0000, David Lecompte wrote:
> > (operating-system
> >   (host-name "albert")
> >   (timezone "Europe/Paris")
> >   (locale "fr_FR.utf8")
> > 
> >   (keyboard-layout (keyboard-layout "fr"))
> >   (bootloader (bootloader-configuration
> >                 (bootloader grub-bootloader)
> >                 (target "/dev/sdf1")
> >                 (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout)))
> 
> The target should be /dev/sdf, but why the GUI installer does not work
> I do not know.  Perhaps download the latest image if you wanted the GUI.

Ohh I forgot something important.  Because device names like /dev/sdf1
could refer to a different drive after reboot (depending on the order
the drives are detected), it is advisable that you instead use device
names from /dev/disk/ for the future

(targets '("/dev/disk/by-id/mmc-SC64G_0xb13f1704"))

to avoid bad surprises.

Regards,
Florian