Request for testing

Request for testing

[Ludovic Courtès]

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Hello,

GNU Guix 0.8 (alpha) is tentatively scheduled for release on Nov. 18th
(soon!).  Further testing of the OS installation image would be welcome.
A bootable USB image for x86_64 can be found at:

  http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/software/guix/gnu-usb-install-20141114.x86_64.xz
  http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/software/guix/gnu-usb-install-20141114.x86_64.xz.asc

SHA1:

  4c255fd9a2bb98b072722e879200eeb6f6096aab  gnu-usb-install-20141114.x86_64.xz
  3a2139a253bc4866bd79f7c8f33cca53bbce4605  gnu-usb-install-20141114.x86_64.xz.asc

The installation instructions are at
<http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/System-Installation.html>
and on tty2 once the installation system has booted.

Please report any issues on #guix (Freenode), guix-devel@gnu.org, or
bug-guix@gnu.org.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

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Re: Request for testing

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hi Ludo and all other Guix hackers,

I figure, with your recent call for reports, it's finally time to
summarize my experience of the system image.

It's been a long-ish journey to get it to work — but a lot of that is
non-guix related :-)

The system seems to run nicely on my gluglug x60 (though it overheats
when building locally — again, a hardware limitation rather than guix).

A couple of notes made whilst using it so far (in no particular order of
importance):
- when writing the system configuration, the password field seems to
  expect the hashed value of the password.  This makes good sense, but
  it might be worth pointing out in the manual somewhere?
  (perhaps in 'User Accounts' -> 'user-account' 'password'?)
- it also took me a while to generate the hashed password (in the end I
  created the password with 'passwd', and then copied from shadow -> the
  system configuration file). This is probably not related to Guix.
- after enabling the x-server, the default shortcut to shell points to
  the wrong location (and it seems like the window manager does not
  respect the user's $PATH?).
- I have some issues with https security certificates not being used by
  curl/wget/git etc. This is not just in the guix system, but also in
  guix on Debian — solution may be simple, but I haven't found it yet
  (this caused some frustration when trying to guix pull :-) )
- adding users in the system configuration, and then removing them from
  the definition does not remove the users from the system. I have no
  idea whether this is intended or not — just something that struck me.

All in all it's very cool to actually be running GNU / Guix as a full
distro, and I'm amazed that most things "just work"!

Sorry for the lack of patches — I hope the feedback is helpful anyway.

Looking forward to 0.8,

Alex

Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Hello,
>
> GNU Guix 0.8 (alpha) is tentatively scheduled for release on Nov. 18th
> (soon!).  Further testing of the OS installation image would be welcome.
> A bootable USB image for x86_64 can be found at:
>
>   http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/software/guix/gnu-usb-install-20141114.x86_64.xz
>   http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/software/guix/gnu-usb-install-20141114.x86_64.xz.asc
>
> SHA1:
>
>   4c255fd9a2bb98b072722e879200eeb6f6096aab  gnu-usb-install-20141114.x86_64.xz
>   3a2139a253bc4866bd79f7c8f33cca53bbce4605  gnu-usb-install-20141114.x86_64.xz.asc
>
> The installation instructions are at
> <http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/System-Installation.html>
> and on tty2 once the installation system has booted.
>
> Please report any issues on #guix (Freenode), guix-devel@gnu.org, or
> bug-guix@gnu.org.
>
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.

Re: Request for testing

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi, Alex,

Thanks for the quick feedback!

Alex Sassmannshausen <alex.sassmannshausen@gmail.com> skribis:

> A couple of notes made whilst using it so far (in no particular order of
> importance):
> - when writing the system configuration, the password field seems to
>   expect the hashed value of the password.  This makes good sense, but
>   it might be worth pointing out in the manual somewhere?
>   (perhaps in 'User Accounts' -> 'user-account' 'password'?)
> - it also took me a while to generate the hashed password (in the end I
>   created the password with 'passwd', and then copied from shadow -> the
>   system configuration file). This is probably not related to Guix.

Actually the ‘password’ field is not really meant to be used under
“normal circumstances”: one should just use the ‘passwd’ command.

Commit eb59595 updates the documentation to clarify that.  Let me know
what you think.

> - after enabling the x-server, the default shortcut to shell points to
>   the wrong location

What do you mean by “shortcut to shell”?  In WindowMaker (which is the
default window manager), there’s an xterm icon in the top-right corner,
and in my experience clicking on it launches xterm.

> (and it seems like the window manager does not respect the user's
> $PATH?).

Do you mean as in <http://bugs.gnu.org/18698> (now fixed), or is it
something else?

> - I have some issues with https security certificates not being used by
>   curl/wget/git etc. This is not just in the guix system, but also in
>   guix on Debian — solution may be simple, but I haven't found it yet
>   (this caused some frustration when trying to guix pull :-) )

Yes, that’s a “known issue.”  The problem goes beyond Guix, I think.
We could package certificates, but which ones?  Where do we take them?
Debian, Mozilla, and others manage their own set of certificates.  I’m
not sure what to do here.

(If/when GNUnet’s GNS comes true, I’m happy to say that X.509
certificates are deprecated...)

> - adding users in the system configuration, and then removing them from
>   the definition does not remove the users from the system. I have no
>   idea whether this is intended or not — just something that struck me.

Yes, it’s intended.  The rationale is that there’s extra state anyway
that needs to be handled manually by the admin (password, home
directory, etc.)

Thank you!

Ludo’.