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<rekado>PurpleSym: while implementing this EBS method I realized that “guix pack” isn’t so well suited, and that I probably want “guix copy”.

<rekado>but for “guix copy” I need Guix!

<rekado>and if I already have Guix I could use the server that prepares the Guix environments as a substitute server

<rekado>so I’m doing this now: one server has an EBS volume on which Guix is installed. That volume has a snapshot, so that all the user VMs that are generated can quickly instantiate a copy — so they have Guix.

<rekado>it’s not the *same* Guix, but that’s okay.

<rekado>they then authorize the main server as a substitute server and download substitutes only from there.

<rekado>they will always get substitutes right away, because the environment has previously been prepared.

<rekado>the only annoyance is that the manifest has to be computed twice, but it makes for nicer copying without involving tar or SSH.

<civodul>not sure what, but there's something to do about this pack/copy story

<rekado>yeah.

<rekado>I just noticed a mistake in my thinking

<rekado>I can’t just use the old Guix on the user VMs to fetch substitutes because I can’t compute the same derivation as on the main server.

<rekado>bleh.

<rekado>oh, but I can just give it the name of the derivation and it will fetch it from the substitute server

<rekado>when this is done I’ll have enough material for a blog post

<civodul>yay for a blog post :-)

<civodul>.drv substitution is a fun thing we could take advantage of more often, i think

IRC channel logs

2021-03-21.log