Re: Installation

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Gábor Boskovits <boskovits@gmail.com> skribis:
>>
>>> I believe, that we could make a powerful extension to guixsd if we could do
>>> an installation from an installation description.
>>>
>>> I think this installation description should look like the operating-system description we
>>> already have.
>>
>> In what way would it defer?  :-)
>>
>> ‘operating-system’ *is* an “installation description.”
>
> I guess it would differ from what we have currently in that it would
> also specify partitioning information, which is not handled by
> “operating-system”.
>
> Does it make sense to extend “operating-system” such that disk
> partitioning information could be included and (*holds breath*) acted
> upon automatically?

I suppose only ‘guix system init’ could actually use that information.

Perhaps we could have a separate partitioning description, and users
could optionally run:

  guix system init --partitioning=part.scm config.scm

?

Is it really an improvement over writing a Parted script, which is
something people can already do?

> Acting on partitioning info is a little scary because it can easily lead
> to data loss upon reconfiguration.  Small bugs could lead to very big
> problems, so maybe this should not be default behaviour.

It’s definitely scary.

Ludo’.