IRC channel logs
2013-10-12.log
back to list of logs
<zacts>can I build a complete distro with guix? <zacts>or which distro is recommended for using guix? <gzg>zacts: Yes; You can use GNU! :^) <gzg>The plan, is to build an upstream GNU distribution via guix. <zacts>i.e. which distro should I use to develop guix? <zacts>can guix replace the package manager of my distro, or install local packages to ~/bin or something? <zacts>can I do everything as an unprivileged user? <zacts>s/everything/most of everything/ <gzg>zacts: Yup, just have to run the daemon as root. <zacts>will guix be easily portable to other OS? such as Gnu/kFreeBSD or Gnu/HURD? <zacts>especially in terms of eventually being able to create those types of distros <gzg>zacts: From what I hear, there is a strong chance that it'll be on Hurd relatively soon -- with the expressed interest I've heard via stowfs. <zacts>wow stow the gnu utility has a filesystem now? <zacts>I really want to work on this project in the future. I'm in college now. I plan to go for a Comp Sci major. <zacts>but I currently know almost nothing about Comp Sci. <zacts>my first step will be installing guix and getting it to work, also testing the qemu image. I guess.. <zacts>I know UNIX/Gnu command line. I used to use vim, but I'm moving to emacs. <gzg>zacts: FYI, don't expect much from the demo image -- it doesn't even have enough space to install file-system utils to expand the partitions. <zacts>I also like minix3 for learning how operating systems work. so maybe one day I can combine gnu + minix3 + guix in some way.. who knows.. <gzg>Full of potential, but you aren't going to get very far as-of yet -- via those sets of means (0.4 vm). <zacts>but that would probably be like 6-7 years from now. <zacts>anyway, so yeah. guix looks way cool. I will read the doc and figure out how to install it. <gzg>zacts: The install is pretty trivial. Once setup though, make sure to do a "guix pull" to get the latest set up expressions made available to you. <zacts>so do 'guix pull' before I do anything else, after the initall install? <gzg>zacts: Well, you don't need to -- also, make sure you have the daemon running, you have ownership of your account in the ../nix/per-user/your-username-folder and your you'll likely need to change group permissions, but after you try to do anything that includes installing, guix should warn you do to that. <gzg>If you have any issues, feel free to come back and ask. :^) <quiliro>what level of knowledge is required to use guix gnu <zacts>quiliro: I've asked the same question. have you tried installing it yet? <zacts>do you know the UNIX/gnu command line and bash? <mark_weaver>to simply install/upgrade/remove packages, it's pretty much like any other modern package manager. <zacts>mark_weaver: yeah, I can't wait to install it <mark_weaver>it's slightly more involved to modify or add new packages, but IMO those jobs are easier in Guix than in most popular package managers as well. <zacts>mark_weaver: guix is definitely an improvement over pkgsrc and FreeBSD ports. <zacts>pkgsrc is _always_ broken and bloated <mark_weaver>I used NetBSD and OpenBSD many years ago, so I'm familiar with the ports system. Indeed, Guix is much nicer. <zacts>I even think that guix is much cooler than poudriere and pkgng <zacts>anyway, I can't wait to install it. <zacts>this is a project that I really want to work on. <zacts>It really has caught my eye. <mark_weaver>one reason I'm interested in Guix is that it should be relatively easy to make bit-for-bit reproducable builds of every package, so that anyone who wants can independently verify the authenticity of the binary packages we provide. <mark_weaver>we're already pretty close to that, but there are a few more issues to deal with, like timestamps being inserted in the binaries. <quiliro>zacts: i know how to use the command line <quiliro>but i was wonderng if university students that don-t know bash could <zacts>ok, I gtg for tonight. I'll be back tomorrow. I'm getting bootstrap errors, none of which are mentioned in the HACKING. <zacts>I've successfully installed guix <zacts>now I just have to learn how to use it as a normal user <zacts>ok, what ports do I need to open in iptables to enable the guix command to connect to the guix-daemon? <zacts>oops, I guess I mean how do I properly set up socket permissions? <zacts>when I run 'guix pull' I get: I see. guix pull: error: failed to connect to `/usr/local/var/nix/daemon-socket/socket': Connection refused <zacts>the file exists, but the permissions are root:root <viric>zacts: you have to run the daemon first <zacts>viric: oh, I thought I did, but I guess I didn't <viric>you need the listening part of the socket running, or you will get 'connection refused' :) <zacts>what is the preferred way to start the guix daemon? I've been doing sudo guix-daemon ... & <viric>ah, well, add rw access to the users with chmod to the socket <zacts>(replace ... with other args to guix-daemon) <zacts>and how should I start the daemon on boot, on a debian system? <viric>I don't touch debian since hamm... no idea. <mark_weaver>The MIPS N32 bootstrap is coming along nicely. I've built the final gcc, ncurses, readline, bash, libffi, libunistring, pkg-config, libgc, and ncurses. m4 failed one of its tests (test-readlink) with: ../build-aux/test-driver: line 95: 11915 Aborted "$@" > $log_file 2>&1 <viric>it seems RMS quite likes bitcoin <viric>I already asked yesterday, didn't I? hm <mark_weaver>viric: do you have a reference on that (RMS quite liking bitcoin)? not that I doubt it, but I haven't heard him say it. <viric>well, he was going to go to unsystem <viric>And I think he mentions that in the talk at Berlin, at Pirate Partys'. <mark_weaver>RMS attending an event does not mean that he supports it. <viric>maybe I made it up... let me check <mark_weaver>I saw that, and by the way they made sure to clarify that it did not imply an endorsement of the pirate party. <viric>there are always listeners that don't care enough <zacts>but, I don't think I'm invoking the daemon in the best way.. <zacts>I'm currently using 'tmux' then 'sudo guix-daemon' then I detach tmux. <viric>does guix-daemon fork into background? <mark_weaver>zacts: did you pass "--build-users-group=guix-builder" to guix-daemon? <zacts>viric: guix daemon doesn't fork for me <mark_weaver>guix-daemon doesn't fork into the background by default <mark_weaver>there might be a flag to fork it, but I've never bothered to use it so far. <mark_weaver>according to guix-daemon --help, there's no such flag, at least not yet. <viric>mark_weaver: "it would be really good if we could by things over the internet, and not identify ourselves." <zacts>ok I did guix pull and got this error: guix pull: error: build failed: some substitutes for the outputs of derivation `/nix/store/j1mvq86k2kf4iq8dj3gmr68xxaznflnf-module-import.drv' failed; try `--fallback' <viric>he didn't mention bitcoin, freicoin, or anything <mark_weaver>RMS also said that sellers don't need to be anonymous. He at least implied that they shouldn't be anonymous, for varioua reasons. <mark_weaver>if so, that might explain the problem zacts has run into. <viric>I used it recently... I don't think it's down <mark_weaver>I always run the daemon with --no-substitutes, since I prefer to build everything from source locally (even though it takes longer), so I don't actually use hydra. <Guest58457>Hydra is there, but it does not compile new derivations. <mark_weaver>when the hydra binaries are digitally signed and independently verifiable (with bit-for-bit identical reproducable builds), then I might start using it. <viric>Guest58457: un paris? the talk in french? <Guest58457>No, September 20, There were two talks actually. <viric>auhm. is that recorded and published? <Guest58457>zacts: I always do "su", then "guix-daemon --... &". <Guest58457>If you do not have "su", a good trick is to use "sudo su" ;-) <Guest58457>viric: I tried to compile freicoin to test qt. We miss boost. <viric>Guest58457: ah I forgot about it wanting boost <viric>in fact stallman has a talk on london 2012 bitcoin. <mark_weaver>civodul: the MIPS N32 bootstrap is going nicely. I've built the final glibc, binutils, gcc, diffutils, findutils, perl, ncurses, readline, bash, libffi, libunistring, pkg-config, and libgc. one of the m4 tests causes an abort, though. time to investigate that further. *mark_weaver looks for clues on the MLs <civodul>the "guix pull" issue that was reported has to do with the order in which files are compiled <mark_weaver>civodul: is the problem due to circular dependencies? <civodul>viric: rather 'nix-channel --update' <viric>ah right, nix-pull was about substitutes <mark_weaver>hmm. one of the m4 tests expects readlink("", ...) to set errno to ENOENT, but on my Guix system, errno is set to EINVAL, which seems reasonable to me. <mark_weaver>however, I'm surprised that others are not hit by this same problem. <mark_weaver>for now, I guess I'll boot into my network-less 3.10.15 kernel just to build m4 :)