Re: Seeking working, complete example for a vm

[myglc2 <myglc2@gmail.com>]

On 11/02/2016 at 22:15 Hartmut Goebel writes:

> Am 31.10.2016 um 19:18 schrieb myglc2:
>> In an effort to reply to your request for a "working, complete example,"
>> I attach the hackage that I use to manage the care and feeding of
>> LAN-visible GuixSD VM images running on a headless GuixSD server.
>
> Thanks for sharing this. And how to you manage the images? I mean: how
> to you toll your GuixSD server to forward packages to the images?

You are very welcome ;-)

I ssh or mosh into a VM and use 'guix pull' and/or 'guix package' and/or
'guix system reconfigure' to manage it. Alternatively, I replace it with
a whole new VM.

The type of "guest" VMs created by this script using 'guix system
vm-image' are "free-standing." They are fully independent of the "host"
machine's configuration/store and should run (not tested) on any host OS
supporting qemu/kvm (probably with mods to the qemu and TAP
parameters). So the only "synergy" between the host machine and guest
VMs is that VM creation goes more quickly if a "similar" VM has been
previously created and/or packages used by the VM have been previously
installed.

AIUI, if you instead use guest VMs created using 'guix system vm' you
gain the advantage of sharing the store and, if you like, other
files. So such VMs are smaller and are created and loaded more
quickly. AIUI, this means that, if you have already installed a package
on the host and/or another guest VM, subsequent installations on other
guest VMs and/or the host machine will "re-use" that package from the
host machine's store and thus go faster.

AFAIK, there is no way to automatically "forward packages" to either
type of Guix VM (hopefully others will correct me if this is wrong).

HTH, - George