Re: Guix "ops"

["Thompson, David" <dthompson2@worcester.edu>]

On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 2:47 PM, Carlos Sosa <gnusosa@gnusosa.net> wrote:
> David Thompson <dthompson2@worcester.edu> writes:
>
>> Thinking out loud here: Maybe 'guix deploy' can kick off the
>> provisioning for all machines first, and afterwards the OS configs can
>> be altered to include the correct /etc/hosts file.
>
>   I like the idea of `guix deploy` with a minor change where we add
>   `guix deploy machine`, but can that be a command that calls separate
>   steps like `guix provision machine` and then `guix set-config machine`
>   or something similar. My intention with that, is that if the command
>   `guix set-config machine` fails at least `guix deploy machine` worked
>   and you can SSH to that machine or debug why did the OS configs
>   failed. To deploy all of our machines in #machines-list we can do
>   `guix deploy` where it defaults to `guix deploy all`. I guess this
>   hints more on the usability perspective, but I think provisioning the
>   OS and the configuration provision should be separate tasks. I will
>   try to develop that soon. I know a patch says more than words. :)

I intend to have several subcommands for 'guix deploy' that perform
various subsets of the deployment "phases".  I don't think your
use-case for "set-config" phase makes sense, because the entire system
is configured in a single operation.  The system would have to boot a
valid GuixSD configuration at least once in order for SSH access to be
available.  Now, a re-deploy (similar to 'guix system reconfigure')
may fail, and that could be rolled back in case of problems.

>> I threw out OpenStack because it's a self-hostable, free software VM
>> platform.  I'm open to any other platforms that will exercise the full
>> range of capabilities that 'guix deploy' needs to be useful.
>
>   I've been using LXC - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LXC to work around
>   with Guix and play with substitutes and offloading. It's been pretty
>   straight forward and clean, I don't know if that would be something to
>   consider.

Cool.  I'd be interested in reading the steps you took to deploy a
GuixSD system with LXC.  FYI, I'm (slowly) working on a pure Guile
container implementation for inclusion in Guix in the future.

- Dave