Repair / reinstall Guix package manager (foreign distro)

[Zelphir Kaltstahl <zelphirkaltstahl@posteo.de>]

Hi Guix Users!

I would like to repair or reinstall my Guix package manager
installation, because it seems broken and nothing I tried fixes the problem.

The problem:

~~~~
xiaolong@xlx200:~/Downloads$ guix pull
Migrating profile generations to '/var/guix/profiles/per-user/xiaolong'...
guix pull: error: symlink: File exists: "/var/guix/profiles/per-user/xiaolong/current-guix"
~~~~

It started appearing, when I once ran `guix pull` and `guix package -u`
as `root` user, to update my locales in the root profile.

Now I can only do a `guix pull` as `root` user, no longer as normal user.

I've tried deleting the symlink, thinking: "Well if the error is, that a
file exists in that place, it probably wants to write there and refuses
to overwrite. I'll delete it for you then." That results in another error:

~~~~
xiaolong@xlx200:~/Downloads$ guix pull
Migrating profile generations to '/var/guix/profiles/per-user/xiaolong'...
Updating channel 'guix' from Git repository at 'https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git'...
guix pull: error: Git error: failed open - '/home/xiaolong/.cache/guix/checkouts/pjmkglp4t7znuugeurpurzikxq3tnlaywmisyr27shj7apsnalwq/.git/FETCH_HEAD' is locked: Permission denied
~~~~

I can get it back to previous state by running `guix pull` as `root`
user again, but it does not fix the original problem then.

Now I've gone 1 step further in frustration and deleted the whole
`/var/guix/profiles/per-user/xiaolong` folder. OK, now guix does not
know about any installed packages any more and the error becomes:

~~~~
xiaolong@xlx200:~$ guix pull
guile: warning: failed to install locale
Migrating profile generations to '/var/guix/profiles/per-user/xiaolong'...
Updating channel 'guix' from Git repository at 'https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git'...
guix pull: error: Git error: failed open - '/home/xiaolong/.cache/guix/checkouts/pjmkglp4t7znuugeurpurzikxq3tnlaywmisyr27shj7apsnalwq/.git/FETCH_HEAD' is locked: Permission denied
~~~~

So I a basically giving up now and want to reinstall. I downloaded the
install script `guix-install.sh` from the website and ran it:

~~~~
xiaolong@xlx200:~/Downloads$ sudo bash guix-install.sh 

(... big GUIX logo here ...)

This script installs GNU Guix on your system

https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/
Press return to continue...
[1593338927.330]: Starting installation (So 28. Jun 12:08:47 CEST 2020)
[1593338927.333]: [ PASS ] verification of required commands completed
[1593338927.364]: [ INFO ] init system is: systemd
[1593338927.368]: [ INFO ] system is x86_64-linux
[1593338928.075]: [ PASS ] Release for your system: guix-binary-1.1.0.x86_64-linux
[1593338928.077]: [ INFO ] Downloading Guix release archive
guix-binary-1.1.0.x86_64 100%[==================================>]  70,14M  4,27MB/s    in 21s     
guix-binary-1.1.0.x86_64 100%[==================================>]     833  --.-KB/s    in 0s      
[1593338949.457]: [ PASS ] download completed.
[1593338950.341]: [ PASS ] Signature is valid.
[1593338959.807]: [ PASS ] unpacked archive
[1593338959.808]: [ FAIL ] A previous Guix installation was found.  Refusing to overwrite.
~~~~

"OK OK! I'll uninstall the previous one!"

But how do I do it exactly? Or is there a flag or anything I can give to
make it overwrite the previous installation?

Regards,
Zelphir

-- 
repositories: https://notabug.org/ZelphirKaltstahl