using guix in virtualbox

using guix in virtualbox

[westlake]

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Hi, I've noticed that people have been using virtualbox with guix, but 
over here with 0.8.1 (64-linux), i'm noticing a bootup issue upon 
post-install

The setup is informative enough from the guix install page, on top of 
which I create two empty .vdi disks, and can use qemu-nbd to transfer 
the raw image of the usb-install.

It's actually pretty easy to set this up, and it took under 20 minutes. 
However after rebooting and then "unplugging" the installer drive from 
Virtualbox. The grub boot menu shows up, it appears the init starts but 
soon there is a freezing issue.

Not sure what to do from this point, I understand more details would be 
needed to see why this is happening so I added an attachment.

thanks

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Re: using guix in virtualbox

[Adam Pribyl]

On Tue, 10 Feb 2015, westlake wrote:

> Hi, I've noticed that people have been using virtualbox with guix, but over 
> here with 0.8.1 (64-linux), i'm noticing a bootup issue upon post-install
>
> The setup is informative enough from the guix install page, on top of which I 
> create two empty .vdi disks, and can use qemu-nbd to transfer the raw image 
> of the usb-install.
>
> It's actually pretty easy to set this up, and it took under 20 minutes. 
> However after rebooting and then "unplugging" the installer drive from 
> Virtualbox. The grub boot menu shows up, it appears the init starts but soon 
> there is a freezing issue.
>
> Not sure what to do from this point, I understand more details would be 
> needed to see why this is happening so I added an attachment.
>
> thanks


This is how I did it with 0.8

convertfromraw gnu-usb-install-version-linux-i686 gnu.vdi --format vdi

Attach it as a new SATA storage to new VB machine, enable PAE in 
System/Processor tab, otherwise it may crash. Add another disk image to 
install to and after a boot continue with install.

Adam Pribyl

Re: using guix in virtualbox

[Ludovic Courtès]

westlake <westlake2012@videotron.ca> skribis:

> The setup is informative enough from the guix install page, on top of
> which I create two empty .vdi disks, and can use qemu-nbd to transfer
> the raw image of the usb-install.
>
> It's actually pretty easy to set this up, and it took under 20
> minutes. However after rebooting and then "unplugging" the installer
> drive from Virtualbox. The grub boot menu shows up, it appears the
> init starts but soon there is a freezing issue.

It seems to be failing very early, but I’m not sure where.

It may be that the initrd is lacking a driver for the virtual disk drive
that you are using.  Do you know what drivers are needed for these?

Assuming the virtio drivers are needed, you might need to amend the OS
configuration along the following lines, and to redo the installation
with that configuration:

  (operating-system
    ;; ...
    (initrd (lambda (file-systems . rest)
              ;; Ask for an initrd that contains the virtio drivers.
              (apply base-initrd file-systems
                     #:virtio? #t
                     rest)))
    ;; rest of the config...
    )

Thanks,
Ludo’.