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2013-10-07.log
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*mark_weaver now has bootstrap tarballs for MIPS with Loongson 2F workarounds... now on to patching bootstrap.scm <viric>mark_weaver: what is your loongson2f computer? <viric>do you already have precompiled binaries in guix? <mark_weaver>I have Guix running on an x86_64 box, which I used to cross-compile the bootstrap tarballs (after adding some of my Loongson 2F patches to binutils). <viric>ah, I meant not specially for loongson2f. Are there precompiled binaries for x86_64? <mark_weaver>yes, although I use --no-substitutes because the binaries are not signed. <viric>(beyond the bootstrap tarball) <mark_weaver>I've never accepted a precompiled binary other than the x86_64 bootstrap tarballs. <mark_weaver>viric: on 28 Oct 2011, I posted my patches to loongson-dev, entitled "[PATCH] Support Loongson FPU instructions to math-emu" with fixes for gas, gdb, the linux-libre for Loongson. still need to get those patches upstream. <viric>what if they were signed? Do you consider it more dangerous that someone changed your dns or so, than someone hacked hydra.gnu.org? <Steap>mark_weaver: do you trust your compiler ? :p <mark_weaver>I won't be satisfied until I can use David Wheelers technique for countering Thompson viruses.. which should be doable with Guix. <viric>the c compilers coming with the go toolchain are written by Ken Thomson, which is even funnier. :) <mark_weaver>viric: indeed, I wouldn't want to trust hydra even if they were signed... <viric>Ken even wrote the first go compiler, I think. hehe <mark_weaver>I didn't used to be quite this paranoid, but the Snowden leaks have made me realize how ambitious the NSA is. <viric>I think Ken's code is easier to audit than gcc's, though. hehe <Steap>mark_weaver: and once you can trust the software, BAM! you' become paranoid about your hardware <viric>well, it depends on who is your enemy. <viric>if you are targetted by the NSA... there is little you can do. <Steap>mark_weaver: not sure that a "ready for Red Flag Linux" computer is better <mark_weaver>not that I entirely trust the Loongson 2F, but I have a great deal more confidence in it than I do in the Intel hardware. <Steap>The main issue is that only huge companies can produce hardware <Steap>Citizens can't fight back as they do with software <mark_weaver>for another thing, the Chinese govt probably has no particular reason to hurt me. wherever the US govt might well. <mark_weaver>I've spent much of the last 12 years or so using MIT's radio station to air views quite critical of US policies. <viric>mark_weaver: making you care on so many details, they already diminished a lot your dedication to whatever can annoy them. ;) <Steap>mark_weaver: oh, you're an American citizen <mark_weaver>Steap: longer term, there's Milkymist. I have much hope there. <viric>it has to be hard, being a USA citizen <Steap>I'm lucky enough to be French. France does not produce much high-tech stuff :D <mark_weaver>yes, it is very uncomfortable to be a US citizen right now. <Steap>mark_weaver: why don't you leave the country ? :p <viric>mark_weaver: USA even creates the mirage to Steap, that he shouldn't care about the French powers. ;) <Steap>viric: our politicians are exactly as bad as mark_weaver's :) <mark_weaver>Steap: the thought has occurred to me quite often. but I've quite conciously avoided wasting time accumulating money for the last 12 years or so. that doesn't exactly make it likely for other countries to want to accept me. <Steap>viric: but France invented "the Minitel", and you've never heard of it :) <Steap>mark_weaver: I think you only need to be able to find a job to move to a country like France <viric>there was that recent bbc article... <mark_weaver>Germany seems to be popular these days for people who are concerned about massive surveillance. Both Laura Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum seem to think so, anyway. <mark_weaver>she's a filmmaker who worked closely with Glenn Greenwald on the Snowden leaks. In fact she was there with Glenn when they first met Snowden in person. <Steap>mark_weaver: it also has a lot of drawbacks :) <Steap>mark_weaver: should we try to move to a better country, or improve the one we live in ? <viric>everyone knows his own answer about that <mark_weaver>I've spent the last 12 years or so trying the latter approach. <Steap>I don't think there's a single country that respects Human Rights <viric>Steap: this is aligned to the Catalans trying to get independant ;) <mark_weaver>I'd still like to try that, but it seems that the tide is against me. <viric>mark_weaver: your version of democracy, does <Steap>mark_weaver: You currently do not have a government, that's great! <viric>mark_weaver: that comfortable to the current politicians in charge <viric>I mean that different people 'use the democratic rules' to their own interest. <viric>I think that democracy gives better options the more well informed is citizenry. <viric>but overall, democracy is an agreement as other regimes will likely result in too bad situations. <viric>Some way to "avoid the worst". Btu that doesn't <civodul>mark_weaver: excellent, re MIPS bootstrapping <viric>civodul: you always put us into politics. <viric>but this #guix thing is yours. <mark_weaver>civodul: indeed! it took a very long time to rebuild after adding the patches to binutils. at some point I have a mind to try to reduce some of that (e.g. building GCC five times, each of which presumably actually builds gcc three times, so 15 times altogether, ouch!) <mark_weaver>yeah, we could talk about politics all day, but I think I can do more good right now by getting Guix running on Loongson :) <civodul>i have been favoring simplicity over efficiency :-) <civodul>rms said that those Chinese machine are OK as long as you're not a Chinese citizen <mark_weaver>civodul: yeah, we can fine-tune things later. basics first! <viric>mark_weaver: how are the math-emu patches related to gas,gdb,...? <civodul>just like Intel machines would be OK for a Chinese citizen <Steap>civodul: so, you can choose between being spied on by the US or China <mark_weaver>viric: well, the fix to gas+gdb was that the encoding for madd.ps (and msub.ps and a few others) were incorrect. <Steap>civodul: might as well just buy the best machine, in this case <mark_weaver>viric: gas/gdb followed what the english-language Loongson docs said, which turned out to be incorrect. <viric>mark_weaver: ah I didn't know. <viric>RMS wants only exports, no internal market. <mark_weaver>(choosing between being spied on by the US or China) <mark_weaver>(though in truth, I suspect that there are some number of bugs in my software that allow the NSA in as well) <mark_weaver>another reason, perhaps more important, is that I want to support hardware that's actually documented, as opposed to blobs-up-the-wazoo of the Intel/AMD world. <Steap>mark_weaver: what's not documented about Intel/AMD processors ? <Steap>mark_weaver: seems like Linux/*BSD works well on those CPUs <mark_weaver>for a long time, my advice to anyone who asks is that if you have a secret that you want to keep from powerful govts, better never type them into a computer. <Steap>mark_weaver: do not write them on a pice of paper <Steap>mark_weaver: make sure you don't talk while sleeping <Steap>mark_weaver: nah, that's completely true <Steap>mark_weaver: if a 'secret' leaves your brain, you're fucked <Steap>mark_weaver: and if you re-read 1984, you'll see that WInston is afraid of talking in his sleep, because his telescreen would record his secret thoughts <viric>the russians switched to typewritters :) <mark_weaver>I actually lead a very public life myself. because of my activities (working closely with people like RMS and Phil Zimmermann, airing radio critical of US activities on MIT Radio, etc), I expect that I'm being watched, so I haven't even really made an effort to keep any secrets. <Steap>I give all my emails to Google <viric>that's the effect of state terrorism. You are terrorized. *jxself makes sure to watch mark_weaver <mark_weaver>now I want to make an effort to keep my communications secret, to show solidarity with those who legitimately need to keep secrets (e.g. whistleblowers) <Steap>then I realized that my mails are mostly public (patches, mailing-lists...) <mark_weaver>and to make as much work for the NSA as I can. if enough of us do that, it may become impractical for them to surveil everything. <viric>I try to make most of my traffic encrypted, to make encryption normal <viric>like what happened with https. <Steap>viric: which means you're a suspect right now :) <viric>it's some kind of solidarity... but it's also care for the future. <viric>https doesn't make anyone suspect. <Steap>viric: nah, but using Tor/PGP/etc. <mark_weaver>so the NSA will have more trouble finding the whistleblowers. <viric>I use tor, but tor is similar to https :) <mark_weaver>we all need the whistleblowers, if we are to have any hope of controlling our govts <viric>USA starts to have its own citizens as its most dangerous enemy. That, of course, ends up putting the USA citizens into a bad situation to its gvt. *civodul would rather get rid of the govt than control it <mark_weaver>we can't control a government if we have no idea what it's doing. <mark_weaver>civodul: agreed, but first we need to provide alternatives for the services a govt provides. that's not trivial. <viric>civodul: the govt will do all its efforts to keep on being there <viric>mark_weaver: secrecy to citizens is justified by the need of keeping secrets to other countries. As every country keeps secrets, that not doing so, will be in "international disadvantage". <mark_weaver>for example, without some kind of a justice system, the strong will simply prey on the weak in a most crude and brutal fashion. <viric>I think that a govt can be fine, if it is forced not to keep secrets to its citizens. <mark_weaver>granted, the current justice systems are quite broken, and actually end up supporting the strong preying on the weak in many cases. <mark_weaver>yeah, that's the other thing: if one government dissolves, then some other power will fill that vacuum. <viric>so, politicians to be punished if they are found doing something secret. <mark_weaver>and real solution to dissolving power has to be done everywhere simultaneously. <mark_weaver>it needs to involve both cultural and technical components. <mark_weaver>also, it should be noted that the *real* powers in the world are now the corporations. <mark_weaver>if you dissolve governments without also dissolving corporations, I think you'd be quite dissappointed with the results. <viric>corporations are powerful thanks to governments, and viceversa <viric>that wouldn't be so, if the government was subject to public scrutiny <viric>I think it's the secrecy that keeps the engine going <civodul>"power exists just because those on which it's applied consent" <Steap>viric: note that the public is fine with the NSA spying on them for security's sake <Steap>civodul: try not to consent and tell me how nice Guantanamo is :) <viric>civodul: it's hard to oppose what you don't know about, though <viric>Steap: that's half of the story, "for security" <Steap>viric: yes, but most American are ok with the government spying on their private conversations <Steap>viric: in France, we have more and more video cameras everywhere, and people are ok with that <Steap>And since democracy consists in doing what people want, why should we do anything against massive surveillance ? <viric>civodul: yes, but that then deserves a study of 'consent' :) <mark_weaver>Steap: I'd be careful about making broad statements about "what the public wants". think about the process by which that summary was compiled. <Steap>mark_weaver: I really think that most people do not give a shit. <viric>Who knows; maybe mass surveillance provides more benefit than damage. ;) <mark_weaver>most people don't have time to think about much other than how to get their next paycheck so they won't starve, get kicked out of their home, or get their heat turned off. <mark_weaver>I think ultimately, that's the root cause of a *lot* of problems. <viric>many people get depressed, if they think over that. <viric>so they willingly avoid thinking on "how bad all is" <Steap>mark_weaver: but even amongst those who do not have this problem, surveillance is not an issue <Steap>mark_weaver: my dad's got money & job security <mark_weaver>I'll grant you that surveillance is pretty far down the list of priorities for most people. <Steap>Hey, they've got nothing to hide ! <Steap>I really think that, the next time I hear that, I'll ask them to post their colonoscopies on Youtube <mark_weaver>Steap: I guess that your dad is probably not a good representative of "most people". <mark_weaver>anyone who has money & job security is already quite apart from "most people" <mark_weaver>most people have something to hide, often because they regularly break some unjust laws (e.g. drug laws), and that naturally makes them worry about surveillance. <Steap>mark_weaver: well, to be honest, we've had many laws that constitute a direct threat to all citizens <mark_weaver>I doubt it's because nobody gives a crap. it's more likely because they have no hope of changing anything, so they don't even take the first step to try. <Steap>mark_weaver: have you ever explained Free Software to the ordinary folks ? <mark_weaver>Steap: of course, but that fails for a different reason: it's too hard for them to understand how those issues affect them. <Steap>mark_weaver: howabout video cameras in the streets ? <mark_weaver>when I talk to people about other issues that are easier to understand, I find that a great many people care about the issues but don't see how they can possibly change anything. <jxself>There was something doing that in Seattle, just standing around recording people trying to make a point. They didn't like it. <Steap>mark_weaver: I'd be interested in knowing how you achieve this, because I do not often manage to convince people <mark_weaver>trying to convince people of things that they don't already believe is a very slow process. so slow that it often seems as though one's efforts to convince have no effect. <Steap>mark_weaver: yes, but you said "I find that a great many people care about the issues" <mark_weaver>well, I've actually had very positive reactions even talking about something as radical as the injustice of the wage slavery system, as I like to call it. <mark_weaver>(I have refused to participate in that system for the last 12 years) <mark_weaver>For the most part, people *really* don't like having to choose some boss (from among the rich) to obey and feign respect for. <mark_weaver>that's true for most people anyway. but if you limit yourself to talking to the rich, you're less likely to get anywhere. <mark_weaver>Steap: maybe you're just talking to the wrong people. People who are already living comfortable are less likely to want any fundamental changes in society. in fact, they tend to fear any big changes. it might upset their comfortable lives. <mark_weaver>but be aware that people like us, e.g. well educated people from comfortable backgrounds, are the minority. <Steap>Depends on what you 'rich', but indeed, people I know have enough money to buy food, pay the rent and have some fun, without having to work 70 hours a week <Steap>mark_weaver: How are you avoiding wage slavery ? <mark_weaver>well, I learned to live out in the woods, and I still do that fairly often. for several years I lived in the GNU project office in the MIT AI Lab, two doors down from RMS. for food, for many years I worked with "food not bombs" and got plenty of food from there. <mark_weaver>currently, I'm helping my best friends raise their young child (~2.5 years) in exchange for room and board. <Steap>But your friend is probably a wage slave, so you kind of live off wage slavery as well, don't you ? :) <Steap>and how do you live in the woods in winter ? <mark_weaver>so far, I haven't had to, but I could do it if needed. <mark_weaver>I view it as an engineering problem, and not a very difficult one. <mark_weaver>people sleep on Mount Everest. Sleeping in Massachusetts is quite a bit easier. <Steap>mark_weaver: you've never had a job ? <mark_weaver>not in the last 10 years or so. the last job I had was as the paid FSF sysadmin. somewhat before that, I was the second programmer hired by Phil Zimmermann at PGP, Inc (the last time I worked on non-free software). <mark_weaver>well, the last *paid* job. I have plenty of jobs now. <Steap>how do you pay for medical expenses ? <mark_weaver>well, I'm in good health, so I rarely need anything, but I have a good friend who's an nurse practitioner, who I sometimes consult with. but more generally, I receive monetary gifts from family sometimes, which I use when needed, e.g. to buy (usually used) computers. <Steap>Yes, but should you need surgery, how'd you pay for it ? <Steap>Especially in a country like the US <mark_weaver>a few years ago, I broke my rib in a bicycle accident, and I let it heal naturally. I didn't even use any painkillers. just an elastic thingy wrapped around my chest. <Steap>mark_weaver: had a similar experience, I wouldn't do it again :) <mark_weaver>Steap: I'd go into debt, a debt that I'd probably never pay. I'd offer to repay (through my services) the people who did the actual labor to help me. <mark_weaver>though I'd probably try very hard to avoid getting any medical care I didn't absolutely need for survival. <mark_weaver>I accept the possibility that I might have to accept death for lack of some expensive medical care at some point. <mark_weaver>I'd rather live free for 10 years than live as a wage slave for 30. <Steap>mark_weaver: as you grow older, you'll need medical care (or a cheap coffin) <Steap>Your sight will not be as good as now <Steap>You're likely to get cancer at some point <mark_weaver>even if I die young from cancer, I suspect I'll have ended up with more free time in the end than most of the people who toil away helping the rich get richer, so that they can prolong their miserable lives a little bit more. <mark_weaver>I find the thought of spending most of my waking hours following orders to be absolutely intolerable. I'd rather be dead. <civodul>"perdre sa vie à la gagner", as people would say in May 68 here... <Steap>mark_weaver: didn't you like working on Free Software ? <mark_weaver>I *am* working on free software. No need for the past tense there. <civodul>(in French "perdre" means "to lose/waste" and "gagner" means to "to win/earn", so that doesn't translate well) <Steap>mark_weaver: it allowed you to get enough money to live comfortably (hey, sleeping in a bed inside a house is nice) and help Free Software <civodul>mark_weaver: and that's appreciated :-) <Steap>mark_weaver: I mean, as a paid job <mark_weaver>working as I am now, I'm not displacing anyone else. I'm adding my labor without removing anyone else's. <Steap>Also, working on something you like is probably good if you consider this as a "transition phase": most people have to work, and you can't change that overnight; but working on something that matters is not so bad <mark_weaver>working on free software for money means that someone else who would've been working on it, won't be. <viric>You have to aovid getting depressed. If you get depressed, they win. <mark_weaver>also, getting paid by the FSF means doing the work that no one else wants to do. <mark_weaver>the fact is, there's not enough money allocated for work that I feel is crucial to future freedom. <Steap>mark_weaver: indeed, nobody's paid to work on Guix! <mark_weaver>the only way I can increase that is to work without taking from that small allocation of money. <mark_weaver>if I'm lucky, by the time I'm an elderly man, I will have done enough of value that someone will help me. If not, it's probably not important. <mark_weaver>vast numbers of people suffer lonely miserable deaths. maybe I will too, but that's not particularly important in the grand scheme of things. <viric>Steap: yes, that can help. :) <mark_weaver>I imagine that as I get older, my view on that might change, but if so, that will be a change for the worse. I can see that now. <viric>mark_weaver: you have to get rich, not being any scrupulous, and then donate all to people who can do something good with it. <mark_weaver>viric: yeah, that's a popular strategy, but not one that I want to persue. for one thing, it's hard to see how to accumulate vast wealth without doing injustice on others. for another, I suspect that somewhere along the way I'd lose sight of the original goal. <viric>There are lots of paths to doing something better than what I actually do :) <viric>But I've to keep on being happy. <viric>I mean, avoid getting depressed <mark_weaver>frankly, I've found that people have a hard time truly sympathizing or helping people who are in a very different situation than they are. i.e., if you are rich, it will hard not to identify more with the needs of the rich than with the needs of the destitute. <mark_weaver>the attempts made by well-meaning rich people to help the destitute are usually half-hearted at best. they almost invariably involve charity, and not making any systematic changes that could truly help in the long run. <viric>yes, charity makes rich feel very well <viric>they want more oportunities for charity. ;) <Steap>You could try to change the system, and it'd take 300 years <Steap>while you're doing that, the poor can't feed themselves <Steap>so instead, you give them food <mark_weaver>For the short term, I'm glad that some rich people are doing charity. I choose to work on longer term strategies to help. Anyway, I'm in no position to help with charity in the short term. <mark_weaver>to a large extent, what I choose to work on is based on my particular skills. I'm a skilled software engineer. I'm a lousy businessman. <mark_weaver>anyway, enough talk for now. time to work on bootstrapping Guix on Loongson :) <mark_weaver>damn, I wish civodul was around. I could use his advice. <mark_weaver>I applied a variant of Nikita's patch to bootstrap.scm, and I can see how that will allow it to find 4/5 of the bootstrap tarballs. but I don't see how it will find the guile bootstrap tarball. <mark_weaver>*grump* for some mysterious reason, a bunch of my /nix/store/*-module-import directories are getting created with group write permissions, which is then later rejected as "suspicious". <mark_weaver>I don't suppose anyone has any hints of why this might be happening, or how to fix it? <mark_weaver>I think I'm fairly close to getting bootstrap going on Loongson, but this problem is biting me. <mark_weaver>ah, setting the umask manually before launching guix-daemon seems to have worked... <mark_weaver>I'm getting: "shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Inappropriate ioctl for device" <alip2890>how can I force a rebuild of a certain package? <viric>mark_weaver: yes, I told him <viric>mark_weaver: it's a bug in ext4 on n32 <viric>don't use 3.5 or 3.6 kernels <viric>mark_weaver: I've a kernel patch for that <mark_weaver>to be honest, I forgot, but /proc/mounts lists it as ext4 <viric>mark_weaver: what's the minimum linux version you build glibc for? *mark_weaver rummages through his old build logs <viric>mark_weaver: for your tarballs <mark_weaver>oh, you mean for the glibc that was built with Guix? I didn't do anything special there, so whatever Guix does by default, I guess. <viric>well, either it's the ext4 problem (I doubt it, if it's 2.6.39), or you have built userland software expecting a kernel newer than what you run <viric>or, third option, I have no idea what it is. <mark_weaver>In the build logs for glibc, I see --enable-kernel=2.6.30, which I guess means I should be okay. <mark_weaver>how do I find out what filesystem it is, (not just what code I'm using to mount it) <viric>isn't there a --minimum-kernel... ? <viric>mark_weaver: dumpe2fs -h dev? <mark_weaver>looking at the libc manual, --enable-kernel "describes the smallest version of the Linux kernel the generated library is expected to support" <mark_weaver>dumpe2fs -h dev prints a lot of information, but I can't tell from all that whether it's ext3 or ext4. <viric>I can't remember if it's affected :) <mark_weaver>hmm. well, the subject says "since 3.5". also, although most of my binaries on this system are N32, the Guix binaries are N64 I believe (or should be) <viric>does your kernel support n64 binaries fine? <mark_weaver>well, I'm able to run the static programs I cross-built using Guix, and they seem to work fine. <mark_weaver>even 'bash' works fine, and doesn't complain when run directly (as opposed to via guix-builder) <viric>aha, similar to what nikita said, but he uses 3.5 <mark_weaver>"file" also reports that the executables are "for GNU/Linux 2.6.30" <viric>you'll have to strace it and check what syscall works bad <mark_weaver>ah, and "file" reports "ELF 64-bit LSB executable" on the cross-built bash, whereas on my N32 executables it reports "32-bit" <mark_weaver>viric: the problem is, what's a reasonable way to run strace from within the guix-builder environment? because everything seems to work correctly outside of guix-builder. <viric>I've never tried n64 binaries, I admit. <viric>I know what's bad in it. Is there anything good? <mark_weaver>well, that's what civodul decided we should concentrate on. <viric>all software will use more ram in n64 <viric>and all mips systems are short on ram <mark_weaver>that's why I chose N32 for the system I built myself. <mark_weaver>but with an eye to the future, I expect that it won't be long before Loongson-based systems are bigger. <viric>I once tried firefox... it uses 50% more ram in x86_64 than in i686 <viric>in those new systems you'll be able to build faster your n64 tarball ;) <mark_weaver>I might produce an N32 version of Guix at some point, but right now I'm just trying to get the basics running. <viric>well, you might find n64 problems. I don't think lots of people use n64. <mark_weaver>civodul wants to add some extra infrastructure for handling multiple ABIs.. infrastructure which is not yet in place. <viric>well, someone has to fix n64, if it has problems! ;) <mark_weaver>speaking of firefox, I've heard that modern web browsers' build systems tend to run into 32-bit address space limits. <viric>I remember the firefox post about that. But that was related to using LTO I think <viric>sometimes the linker had troubles, also, for the amount of symbols. but gold could handle better those cases. <mark_weaver>anyway, all of the tests I've run on my cross-built N64 binaries work so far, e.g. bash, and even the guile works fine. <mark_weaver>but yeah, I guess the immediate problem I'm running into is related to the failure of the shell to determine the current working directory, when run within guix-builder. <mark_weaver>it's interesting, though, that my system outside of Guix seems to work fine. <mark_weaver>and even the Guix bootstrap binaries seem to work fine outside of guix-builder. <viric>mark_weaver: the ext3/4 problem of readdir, yes <viric>but I'm afraid it works only for n32. The best is to use a recent kernel <mark_weaver>I have an extensive system built here, all on N32, including GNOME 2.32. <mark_weaver>I've never had problems because of this readdir thing. <viric>ralf acknowledged the trouble, but admitted it was very hard to solve <viric>I'm not sure he even properly fixed it. <mark_weaver>I guess one approach would be to construct simple derivations that do things like run strace on some command. <mark_weaver>but for that, I'd need an strace binary accessible within the chroot. <mark_weaver>I used the 'chroot' within /nix/store/*bootstrap-binaries-0/bin to chroot to that directory, and then ran 'bash' and 'pwd' there and they worked fine. <viric>mark_weaver: can't you add it to the tarball? <mark_weaver>yeah, though I just noticed that 'strace' doesn't show any of the arguments passed to n64 syscalls. <mark_weaver>(or at least the one that I built against my n32 libraries) <viric>one year ago or so, there was a strace completely buggy <viric>all syscalls were wrong on n32 <mark_weaver>well, I'm going to have to pick this up later. clearly, debugging this is not going to be easy. <mark_weaver>maybe I should try to convince civodul to concentrate on n32 for now. <viric>prepare a chroot like it does <mark_weaver>I'm going to wait until civodul is around to give me some hints. I suspect that he could tell me in a few minutes what would otherwise take me hours to figure out by reading code. <civodul>when Lennart speaks of sandboxing for "apps", i find it somewhat scary <civodul>it's pretty clear that once sandboxing is in place, with a stricter FHS spec etc., it'll be an excellent medium to distribute proprietary apps <viric>civodul: on the lines of android, no? <mark_weaver>I've got cross-built static N64 binaries cross-built using Guix (from x86_64), and they seem to work perfectly whenever I try to use them directly. but when run within guix-builder, they have problems. <mark_weaver>to make matters more complex, 'strace' works well on N32 binaries, but on N64 it shows the syscalls and the return values, but not the arguments.. making the output rather less than helpful :-( <mark_weaver>civodul: what's the easiest way to run arbitrary code within the same environment that guix-builder runs recipies in? <viric>civodul: but the current situation is quite bad. Any application has access to almost all other applications memory, filesystem view, etc. <viric>I don't expect anything good form Pottering <civodul>mark_weaver: i just replied to your message <civodul>mark_weaver: but basically, you could use build-expression->derivation <civodul>from there you can try (getcwd), (scandir "/"), things like that <civodul>mark_weaver: aah, just read about strace, crap :-/ <civodul>well if we don't have strace, that'll be harder indeed <civodul>viric: yeah, i agree that POLA is what we need; i'm afraid of GNOME trying to compete with Android <civodul>viric: what's the deal with strace on MIPS? <mark_weaver>I wonder if we should concentrate on N32 for now. It is much more appropriate for machines of limited resources such as the YeeLoong. <civodul>i'll let you argue with the other MIPSers ;-) <viric>wasn't n32 a great achivement after n64? :) <viric>64-bit arithmetic without the heavy 64-bit pointers <viric>n32 is all 64-bit but the pointers. <civodul>Andreas does number crunching, so he cares about having big integers <civodul>mark_weaver: then you may be able to convince him <viric>unless I misunderstood something, which can be. <viric>o32 was 32-bit all. then 64-bit mips came in. o64 was a hack, then n64 came. 64-bit pointers were heavy, and then n32 was nicer <mark_weaver>civodul: on N32, int and long are both 32-bits, but long long is 64 bits. <mark_weaver>civodul: but N32 requires a 64-bit processor, and takes advantage of 64-bit registers and such. <civodul>as long as PARI/GP and GMP get the same big ints on n32 as on n64, i think he'd agree ;-) <civodul>best to send an email while the n32 bootstrap binaries are building :-) <mark_weaver>civodul: what's the best way to arrange for different configure flags to be passed to builds depending on the host or target? where are build/host/target available from within guix? <civodul>just run "guix build bootstrap-tarballs --target=mips64el-linux-gnu" <mark_weaver>as I recall, it ends up requiring some additional configure flags to some things. <mark_weaver>e.g., when I build gcc, I pass "--with-abi=n32" and "--with-mips-plt" <handheldCar>Do packages like linux go where the system can use them (/boot)? <civodul>mark_weaver: n32 is the default for mips64el-* in gcc/binutils/glibc IIRC <civodul>so when you run the above command, it just DTRT <civodul>otherwise see the "Porting" node of the manual <civodul>handheldCar: in theory, yes, but in practice it's inconvenient at this stage <civodul>you would have to point your grub.cfg to /nix/store/...-linux-libre-3.11/bzImage *youlysses now has a dedicated machine for guix/gnu -- though ATM it's not setup. :^P <civodul>there's usually no point in having Linux in a profile, since all it provides is the kernel <civodul>so the only way Linux is useful is when referenced from grub.cfg *civodul has patches-in-origin working