Re: Trying to install Guix with Qemu

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> skribis:

> I've just started playing with Guix and would like to do so using Qemu
> rather than bare metal.  As the GNU system is only available for Guix
> 0.7 as a USB drive image, this has posed a bit of a vexing problem to
> me.  I am a Qemu novice (I usually use Virtual Box) but I did get it to
> boot the USB image file and also was able to mount a created qcow2 disk
> image for it.  That is where I seem to have run aground.

FWIW a recipe to install the system in a VM was posted at
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2014-09/msg00149.html>
(also read subsequent messages for troubleshooting.)

> It seems that Qemu when passed the -usb option makes that image /dev/sda
> and the image file I intend to install to must be given with the -hdb
> option.  When I edited /mnt/etc/config.scm I assumed the disk image
> would be /dev/sda but that seems to have resulted in at least Grub
> (maybe more packages) being installed into the USB image.  Clearly, this
> isn't what I want.  Do I specify /dev/sdb in config.scm and then just
> boot it as -hdb in the future?

The best thing to do is to assign a label to that partition, and then
refer to that label in config.scm, as noted under “Preparing for
Installation” at
<http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/System-Installation.html>.

> I apologize if this is more of a Qemu question as I didn't see anything
> in the Qemu documentation that steered me toward reversing its drive
> assignments.  Hopefully, I'm not the only person interested in exploring
> the GNU system/Guix in a virtual machine, am I?

It’s even better on the metal.  ;-)

HTH,
Ludo’.