Re: Hosting a GuixSD server on commodity hosting platforms, a journey

[Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org>]

Christopher Allan Webber writes:

> What am I doing wrong?  I'm not totally sure... I feel like I'm
> navigating a jungle out here in the OpenStack / Rackspace docs.  Here's
> one thing I found:
>
>   https://community.rackspace.com/products/f/25/t/7186
>
> So I probably need to execute this "import" command.  I guess that's
> what's next...

Well, I did a bit more exploration tonight with *some* progress, but
still not success.  I followed the above link and got a task to generate
an image based off my file.  Looks like the task took!  And it showed up
in "image-list" with the glance command line client.  Sounds like
progress!

And hey, if I try to create the server now via the web UI... if I look
to create an image based off the images list from
"Saved -> Deleted Servers (!!!)" menu, I indeed see my image listed.
Cool!  So I select that and click "create server".

Ok... I wait a bit.  It says it's initializing it!

Uhoh, suddenly the status turns to ERROR.  What's ERROR?  I don't know.
It says ERROR, and it's red.  Hovering over it suggests I ask support.
Hm.

I wonder if I used the Nova command line client if I'd get more
information, or if there's a way to query the API to get more info.

Still, that's *some* progress... I kicked off generating an image
generated via GuixSD, even if it didn't work at all... :)

Relatedly!  User dvc in #guix on freenode suggests looking at
https://www.vultr.com/ which looks quite affordable and hey!  It has a
"custom ISO" option.  If we can convert our USB boot stick thingy
(presumably via xorriso) we could try generating a base server image
from there.  I'd prefer to have a workflow where I go from handing off
something made with "guix system vm-image" to some API, but maybe in the
meanwhile Vultr would be a lower barrier to entry.

In the meanwhile, anyone familiar enough with Nova or Rackspace want to
give me hints on how to find out more about what ERROR means, more
specifically? ;)

Onwards and upwards!
 - Chris