How to change the store location

How to change the store location

[Jean-Christophe HAESSIG]

Hi,

I'm experimenting with Guix to use it on an HPC cluster. In the docs it 
is written that the store's *default* location is /gnu/store/ but I 
can't find how that location ca be changed. Same for /var/guix.

As for the 'why', it would matter if Guix was used for sharing software 
between nodes so that users can find their profile on any node, and 
using Guix at the same time to manage system software on nodes.
That way, the node can (re)start even if the network shares for users 
are unavailable for some reason.

Thank you,
J.C. Haessig

Re: How to change the store location

[Leo Famulari]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2022 at 03:19:57PM +0000, Jean-Christophe HAESSIG wrote:
> I'm experimenting with Guix to use it on an HPC cluster. In the docs it 
> is written that the store's *default* location is /gnu/store/ but I 
> can't find how that location ca be changed. Same for /var/guix.

These are configured while building Guix:

$ ./configure --help
[...]
--localstatedir=DIR     modifiable single-machine data [PREFIX/var]
[...]
--with-store-dir=PATH   file name of the store (defaults to /gnu/store)
[...]

If you change the store directory, then you won't be able to use
substitutes from the project's build farm.

Re: How to change the store location

[zimoun]

Hi Jean-Christophe,

I am a bit late to the party. :-)

On Wed, 23 Feb 2022 at 15:19, Jean-Christophe HAESSIG <haessigj@igbmc.fr> wrote:

> I'm experimenting with Guix to use it on an HPC cluster. In the docs it 
> is written that the store's *default* location is /gnu/store/ but I 
> can't find how that location ca be changed. Same for /var/guix.

If I remember correctly, Grid’5000 did something like that.  Ludo, a
pointer?

The only documentation for installing on cluster is:

    https://hpc.guix.info/blog/2017/11/installing-guix-on-a-cluster/

and maybe it could be worth to add such in the Cookbook. :-)


Cheers,
simon