Re: Review of installation manual draft

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi Petter,

Thanks a lot for the additions to the manual!

There was a lot more than I expected.  ;-)  For now, I’ve focused on the
improvements to the “System Installation” section, leading to commit
dedb8d5.

It turned out to be more work than I expected because I had to find out
what the differences were (some paragraphs had been moved to a single
line, which made it hard to spot the differences), and then ended up
doing a few things differently to preserve consistency.

In the future, it would be awesome if you could send more focused
patches and make sure the diffs don’t show unrelated “noise.”

Petter <petter@mykolab.ch> skribis:

> +Open the file in one of the editors. We'll now walk you through the updates you need to make in the operating-system declaration in turn from top to bottom.
> +
> +@table @asis
> +@item @samp{host-name}
> +Will be the name for this system. It'll be used for identifying this system on the network and should be unique amongst the computers in your LAN(s). You may also see it in shell prompts. Use ASCII letters and digits only unless you know what you're doing.
> +
> +@item @samp{timezone}
> +This value must match a supported timezone exactly. To find the value you need here you can run the command
> +@example
> +tzselect
> +@end example
> +and answer its questions. When it asks "Is the above information OK?" answer "1" (Yes). The value in the last line of output is the value to use in your configuration.
> +To get a shell prompt for running commands you can change virtual console (Ctrl-Alt-F#), or close the editor.
> +
> +@item @samp{locale}
> +This value must match a supported locale exactly. To get a list of supported locales and their typing run the command
> +@example
> +ls /run/current-system/locale/@var{X.Y}
> +@end @samp{example}
> +where X.Y is the libc version (just press TAB at this level). Find the locale you want in the listed output and take note of exactly how it is typed (trailing / is not included in the name).
> +To get a shell prompt for running commands you can change virtual console (Ctrl-Alt-F#), or close the editor.
> +
> +@item @samp{bootloader}
> +Update the @samp{device} argument according to the comment in the example configuration. Typical value is @var{/dev/sda}, note there's no trailing digit. This will instruct the installation to install GRUB to the MBR of your disk. This is fine even if you're going to use the boot loader in your boot firmware, it will just be unused in this case.
> +@end table

I did not include this as is because I think most of it is redundant
with (or should be covered by) the “operating-system Reference” section.

I have not yet integrated the bits about setting up an encrypted root
etc. because I first want the bits below to be fixed in the code.

> +@subsection Booting a fully encrypted system
> +
> +@emph{This chapter is only for systems with encrypted boot.}
> +
> +To be able to boot with encrypted boot you need a system with GRUB flashed into the boot firmware, like with Coreboot/Libreboot.

It’s not clear to me how much of it is specific to Coreboot/Libreboot.
It seems like it could equally well work when GRUB is spawned by a
random proprietary BIOS no?

> +@table @asis
> +@item Manual steps to boot your fully encrypted system
> +Press @kbd{c} in GRUB to enter command mode.

Seems to me that GuixSD should automatically DTRT when installing on an
encrypted root file system.  See <http://bugs.gnu.org/21843>.

> +menuentry "GuixSD (current)" @{
> +  cryptomount @var{grub-partition}
> +  set root=(crypto0)
> +  set guix_system=/var/guix/profiles/system
> +  linux  $@{guix_system@}/kernel/bzImage --root=@var{your-root-partition} --system=$@{guix_system@} --load=$@{guix_system@}/boot
> +  initrd $@{guix_system@}/initrd
> +@}

I think this sort of answers the above bug report, no?

Thanks a lot for your feedback on this!

Ludo’.