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2015-02-09.log
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<jgrant>Checked on the mailing list, those proposed Guix + GuixSD logos are real nice. <jgrant>Gabou: Ty for the torrent, I've been seeding for sometime and plan to till about a month after the next major release. <jgrant>Are you posting them to the ML or similar and/or have communicated with other parties such as civodul or mark_weaver about putting them on the ftp server? <Gabou>jgrant: i've not done it yet, i was waiting for you wondering if you wanted to do it? <jgrant>Gabou: If it's not up there by tuseday evening, I certainly will if you want me to. <Gabou>jgrant: so you want me to do it? :P <jgrant>Gabou: Feel free to, I just probably won't get to it until Tuesday. <jgrant>Also, I checked my rtorrent instance and it appears to have stoped seeding to it. Odd. <Gabou>I'm going to sleep, good night there and thanks jgrant i'll mail that tomorrow or so! <jgrant>Ah, it's because no one else is connected to the torrent. <paroneayea>davexunit: np. Maybe there's some chance it's helpful for someone else :) *davexunit almost has guix-web ported to Kefir <davexunit>the package list is a lot of work, but almost there! <davexunit>and now the paginator doesn't run on forever. ;) <kete>zacts, they made a breakthrough with the unsigned Intel BIOS binary blob. I hope they can reverse engineer it. <jxself>Breakthrough? AFAIK, only signature checking will be off which aIUI is an option available to all motherboard manufacturers. <kete>when do hardware vendors cooperate with free software developers? <jxself>It seems that Todd is capitalizing on people's desires for x86 stuff that is free and yet modern with a promise that maybe it might possibly be free at some future point. <jxself>But this is exactly the situation we've been in already, it's just that Todd knows how to use the right words with people and get people to dismiss the blobs that are there or make them seem that they're less than they are, etc. <kete>jxself, "Getting rid of the signature checking is an important step." –RMS <jxself>kete: I don't dispute that, it's just an option available to all motherboard manufacturers. <jxself>It seems that Steve Jobs isn't the only person with a Reality Distortion Field. <ewemoa>may be it's known already, but i've tried some instructions for nix with proot (so no root access necessary yet the binary cache is still usable) -- perhaps something similar is doable w/ guix? <sir123>Hey, it's me again. I am proud to say that I am typing from my GSD install into Emacs' ERC! What I want to know now is: how do I download the Guix source? Does Guix itself have an easy way to grab its own source, like Debian's apt-get source? <mark_weaver>the analogous command in guix is "guix package -S <package-name>". however, if you intend to contribute to guix, it would be better to clone our git repository. <sir123>I would like to do that. My biggest problem at the moment is I'm not great at navigating the GNU OS. I don't know who to ask, what should I do? <sir123>Has anyone written a guide on how to use the GNU operating system? I think I'd be better to acquant myself with the system before I contribute. <mark_weaver>well, there are so many different user interfaces, no single guide could be applicable to all of them. <mark_weaver>learning emacs might be a good start. emacs has a built-in tutorial <mark_weaver>I prefer emacs and command-line programs to use the system. <mark_weaver>there are also graphical environments that are closer to what other popular OSes offer. they are easier to learn, but much less flexible. <sir123>I'm basically using one window of emacs in Ratpoison. It's... a little jarring from the likes of KDE and GNOME. <mark_weaver>I agree with Eben Moglen who compared using a mouse and clicking on things to "pointing and grunting". and (paraphrasing) that when our interactions with computers are reduced to pointing and grunting, neither we nor they will grow as we should. <sir123>Ok, that makes sense. You don't grow a connection with the system with an easy GUI. <mark_weaver>when you learn to use language to communicate with a computer, that's fundamentally more expressive. <sir123>Nice. How can I start learning the language of the computer? Do I need to learn how every program works? How should I approach the system? <mark_weaver>sir123: first, tell me your background. what do you know about computers already? <rekado>is anyone using WindowMaker? I thought I'd give it a try, but in a fresh install the configuration tools don't appear to be available. <mark_weaver>fwiw, I've used ratpoison in the past, but nowadays I'm running XFCE on Guix, and mostly running just two programs: emacs and icecat. <rekado>(heh, I've been doing the same on Fedora: just Emacs and Icecat, but inside GNOME.) <mark_weaver>rekado: I would prefer to use GNOME, but we don't have it yet in Guix, and I'd rather have Guix than GNOME. <mark_weaver>sir123: well, maybe I asked too large a question. the thing is, you present yourself with great humility, but at the same time, you seem fairly capable of using our system already. <sir123>I (unfortunately) began on Microsoft Windows. I knew it was bad even back then, in a way. My first was Windows 98, so a little past DOS. My dad knew a lot about MS Windows, so he taught me how to use the utilities of the system. Not much, but I knew how to operate it. Never got into the depths of the system (I know, depths in a proprietary system, what a joke). I always enjoyed using the computer. When I made my way into GNU/Linux, I <sir123>hopped around the distributions. I used all the graphical-ended ones, before I tried the FSF-approved distros. Still frustrated by not getting the experience out of the system I wanted, I tried Parabola GNU/Linux, installing the system myself and loving KDE. I only left it because the website got messed up. I bounced back to openSUSE, and then read the news on Guix. Here I am <sir123>I always knew ifconfig, cd, and the essentials, but I really wanted to learn what made it *tick*. However, the installation of Guix makes me feel a little overwhelmed. I know the basics, but I don't know how to use the system *efficiently*. <mark_weaver>sir123: okay. the thing is, unlike other popular OSes, there is an _enormous_ amount of diversity in how you can use the GNU system. <mark_weaver>the diversity can make it somewhat bewildering to a newcomer, I suppose. <mark_weaver>sir123: for now, I would recommend installing XFCE on Guix, as well as Icecat. <sir123>I know how to operate a computer, I'm just surprised by getting into an alpha distro and having to get closer to the guts of the system. <sir123>Does XFCE need any special configuration to get it to work? Is there a special installation process considering it is a DE? <mark_weaver>first, you'll need to do "guix package -i xfce icecat" to install those two packages. <mark_weaver>and you'll probably need to create a script ~/.xsession to start xfce. <mark_weaver>I confess that I don't know for sure how much needs to be done manually at this point. they've done a lot of work to make it easier to install since I installed it. <mark_weaver>but it should hopefully be sufficient to have the following in .xsession: <mark_weaver>oh, one more thing. for using emacs, you absolutely must make the key to the left of "a" be "control", not "caps lock" <mark_weaver>toward that end, I recommend putting the following between the two lines I gave: <sir123>I'll do that. US has worked in the past. <mark_weaver>iyzsong, here on channel, is the one who added XFCE to Guix, and is the best person to ask about what's needed to install it now. <mark_weaver>(I really need to do a fresh install of GuixSD to refamiliarize myself with the current installation process) <mark_weaver>sir123: oh, you'll need to 'guix package -i setxkbmap' to get that program. <mark_weaver>and then you can run it from the shell prompt at any time. so you can remap it right now. <mark_weaver>so yeah, I would recommend getting XFCE set up as your next step, to have a more comfortable environment. <sir123>Okay. I know a bit about it from Parabola GNU/Linux. <mark_weaver>sir123: also, for documentation of individual programs, type C-h i within emacs to access the manuals. <sir123>Thank you, sir. I am very grateful for your support. <mark_weaver>sir123: oh, you may also need to make .xsession executable, with the following command: "chmod +x .xsession" <kete>jxself, thanks for explaining that <rekado>Why is WindowMaker installed by default on a fresh install of GNU GSD? It's not in /etc/config.scm. <xjgrant>rekado: I was asking this same thing the other day. <xjgrant>Might he a good thing to bring up on the ML, as I expect it to get more attention there. <ewemoa>rekado: a guess regarding guilty parties: gnu/services/xorg.scm, %default-xsessions, slim-service ? <sir123>Hi again, got xfce working. I do have a problem though: issuing halt to kill dmd causes the error connect: /home/<username>/.dmd./run/socket: no file or directory. How do I resolve this? This blocks reboot as well. <sir123>I don't know what this problem is. Any suggestions on diagnosis? <sir123>I assume dmd is a subproject of Guix, right? <rekado_>I've got a zip file containing sources, so I need to replace the unpack phase to unzip the archive. Unfortunately, this also means that I cannot use snippets to modify the sources, because this appears to only work with archives supported by "tar". <rekado_>later tell sir123 Does this also happen when you run "halt" as root? I got the same message but only when running "halt" as an unprivileged user. <davexunit>rekado_: the issue is surely that they didn't run 'halt' as the root user *davexunit pushes FRP overhaul for guix-web <andreoss>i see this warnings with guix built bash <andreoss>bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.utf8) <andreoss>i believe it's due to (locale-definition ...) missing in my machines.sch <andreoss>now when i put the list of locales (en_US.utf8) in machines.sch. how do i apply this change to packages I already has installed? <davexunit>andreoss: you'll need to run 'guix system reconfigure machines.sch' first <andreoss>i get error ~ERROR: Unbound variable: build-machine~ <davexunit>because what you have there is a list of build machines for offloading builds <davexunit>that file also doesn't import the relevant module that 'build-machine' is defined in. <andreoss>davexunit: i want to rebuild packages with new locale definitions <andreoss>machines.sch contains the machine where the packages were built and installed <davexunit>how did you use this file in the first place? <andreoss>seems i've missed the step of operating-system declaration <davexunit>according to the documentation, that file must be /etc/guix/machines.scm <davexunit>andreoss: if you're not using GSD, what are you doing with operating-system declarations? <davexunit>build-machine and operating-system are different. <andreoss>davexunit: can i define an already installed OS with operating-system? <davexunit>you can reconfigure an existing GSD install with a new OS config, if that's what you're asking. <andreoss>seems i'm missing some key points and should review the documentation <andreoss>the question was how to rebuild my locally installed packages with locales i need <a_e>A question for the scheme wizards: <a_e>Can I access a "private" variable (created with define, not define-public) outside its module? <davexunit>andreoss: you shouldn't need to rebuild packages <a_e>I am writing a package that needs access to the source of a package in another module. <davexunit>you're likely just missing an environment variable or something <taylanub>a_e: that'd be a Guile-specific question, and yes, you can with module-ref or so... <davexunit>but I'm not familiar with that error so I don't know exactly. <a_e>davexunit: Thanks! I am a bit lost on what are keywords and what variables. So a concrete example: <a_e>(@@ (my (gnu packages texlive)) texlive-extra-src) <davexunit>(@@ (gnu packages texlive) texlive-extra-src) <a_e>Okay, thanks! At work I am using a language in which "my" declares a local variable ;-) <a_e>No ;-) But probably inspired from it. <davexunit>there's this guy in "Linux Pro" magazine that always writes long articles about doing web development in perl every month. <davexunit>paroneayea: cool! React gives the the willies, though. <davexunit>it's reactive, but not really functional from what I can tell. <davexunit>it also emphasises the use of this unholy amalgamation of JavaScript and HTML called JSX <davexunit>I started having Angular flashbacks and ran away <paroneayea>davexunit: I saw the jsx code and was a bit surprised <paroneayea>davexunit: "obviously" it's now time to build the equivalent of clojurescript for guile and code in that instead :) <davexunit>I like using plain ol' JS to write my mithril templates <davexunit>but better than another psuedo-HTML templating language <davexunit>paroneayea: now that you have a working guix, you can try out guix-web ;) <paroneayea>davexunit: I'm not totally clear how guix environment works <paroneayea>where is the environment stored? If I run guix environment -l env.scm again, will it re-activate the one it set up before? <paroneayea>how do environments and garbage collection work? <davexunit>if the 'guix environment' process has stopped, yes. <paroneayea>davexunit: okay, that's good to know... maybe worth clarifying in the docs :) <paroneayea>the "reactivation" and "gc" parts were not clear to me based on that page *paroneayea hopes he's being helpful, not annoying :) <davexunit>I've started brainstorming 'guix environment vm', my would-be Vagrant competitor ;) <davexunit>civodul wrote all the pieces I need to build it... just have to make the UI and the glue. <paroneayea>davexunit: so I've been thinking of building a vagrant/ansible type replacement thing using sexps, and indeed I've been prototyping it... a few times over! <paroneayea>something that is also recipe'able, where many of the common parts of configuring recipes are distributable like packages <paroneayea>davexunit: maybe using guix as some basis could be helpful, but there's a ~problem in that I think supporting non-guix systems at this point might still be important <paroneayea>but maybe guix can still be used as a basis for some of it, I don't know <davexunit>I have given up on that path, because I think it's not worth the trouble. <davexunit>it's certainly a noble task to be able to use an existing distro <davexunit>certainly we could support non-GuixSD host systems, but the generated VMs and such would be GuixSD systems. <paroneayea>davexunit: ah, I'm talking more about the ansible side than the vagrant side right now <paroneayea>it seems that guix's gexps and etc might still be useful for such a system <paroneayea>since it seems like (am I right?) that those can be written to fly across the wire more or less (??) <davexunit>gexps produce build-side code that automagically refer to the necessary input derivations. <davexunit>so if you reference the 'emacs' package or something, it becomes an input *sirgazil is cloning guix <davexunit>it's pretty nice. you can just write regular lisp for the most part and the depdencies are automatically determined. *paroneayea needs to actually start writing out code using things, clearly <paroneayea> • Gexps are meant to be written to a file and run or manipulated by other processes. <davexunit>because the un-gexp'd forms in a gexp are replaced by the absolute path to the built derivation within the store, I think. *paroneayea wonders how it determines what modules are required <paroneayea>modules are a keyword argument to gexp->derivation <paroneayea>davexunit: I went to a talk at SeaGL where the presenter explained how ansible sends things across the wire :) <davexunit>it's nice that, in guix, we can write build-side code by just quoting and sexp. <paroneayea>the route that joey hess' propellor stuff takes is a little bit more likeable to me <paroneayea>just push your whole config system over to the target machine, compile and build the stuff there (it's in haskell) and then run it <paroneayea>that's the route I was taking with the project I was prototyping also <paroneayea>it seems that writing out sexps might be nicer though. <paroneayea>seems like the tooling for it is close to being there though <paroneayea>maybe that's something I should try working towards <paroneayea>instead of writing "yet another ansible replacement, but with sexps <davexunit>we have the tools to install and re-configure machines. just needs some extra work to do it for something over the network, and for possibly a large group of machines simultaneously. <taylanub>we probably want to support mirror://openbsd ... <paroneayea>davexunit: so, actually, I'm hitting a problem with guix environment <paroneayea>checking whether build environment is sane... configure: error: ls -t appears to fail. Make sure there is not a broken <paroneayea>configure: error: newly created file is older than distributed files! <sirgazil>Hi, I'm trying to ./configure Guix as described in the HACKING file, so that I can use it with ./pre-inst-env instead of running make install, but I'm getting this error: <sirgazil>./configure: line 7127: syntax error near unexpected token `have_guile_json,' <sirgazil>./configure: line 7127: `GUILE_MODULE_AVAILABLE(have_guile_json, (json))' <sirgazil>Note that I'm a potential GuixSD end-user trying hard to start using the system right now :P <mark_weaver>sirgazil: that indicates the guile.m4 was not installed when you ran ./bootstrap <sirgazil>I didn't install guile-json because the instructions say it's optional. <sirgazil>I think I installed the dev package because of another error, but I'll check again... <mark_weaver>sirgazil: did you re-run ./bootstrap after installing guile-dev? <davexunit>I've been thinking: there have been several instances now where I wish I could tell 'guix environment' explicitly which inputs I wanted, rather than specifying a package to get inputs from. <mark_weaver>davexunit: how would that be different from a custom profile? <mark_weaver>hmm, well, I guess tree of symlinks vs long environment variable settings. <davexunit>mark_weaver: because it would still create a temp environment <mark_weaver>and automatically setting the environment variables that 'guix package' only prints. <davexunit>when I'm developing new software, I don't have a package to pull inputs from. <davexunit>for now, I've been creating a dummy package with the necessary inputs <davexunit>paroneayea: so does 'guix environment' work? does this error happen when running ./configure from the new shell? <davexunit>I guess what I really want is a way to specify a derivation as an argument, rather than just a package. <paroneayea>I am going to try it, then with the --pure flag if not <davexunit>I'm just not sure when the error is happening. <paroneayea>davexunit: yeah none of that fixes it, not even --pure :) <paroneayea>davexunit: some searches suggest aliases or file paths with spaces (?????) may be at fault <paroneayea>but why either of those would be relevant? no idea <davexunit>I'll need to dig around when I have the time to see what broke this <davexunit>search paths for the current-system are malformed: <davexunit>I ran 'guix package -p /run/current-system/profile/ --search-paths <paroneayea>I wonder if there's any way that the built coureutils files are playing with the system clock differently than something else that autotools is running <taylanub>exim's compilation model is an abomination. I won't bother with this for now. <civodul>did you know that: wicd (the daemon) runs 'ifconfig' every second or so to get the status of the network interfaces <paroneayea>notably configure and make work find in ~/devel/guix/ <paroneayea>which makes me wonder if I ever ran things in guix <paroneayea>davexunit: so, a fresh guix checkout configures/makes fine <paroneayea>66cc6e85f0138b15781e29a5853958d8cc4cf01d is the culprit <paroneayea>yeah I think there's a touching thing happening here but not sure what file <davexunit>I have no idea how I managed to get the timestamps in that state <paroneayea>davexunit: okay also, now I'm in the environment, and I ran make <davexunit>I should add a "guix web is now running on port 8080" <davexunit>paroneayea: surf to localhost:8080 in your web browser <davexunit>make sure you run "./pre-inst-env guix web", too <paroneayea>ice-9/boot-9.scm:106:20: In procedure dynamic-link: file: "libgcrypt", message: "file not found" <paroneayea>Makefile:754: recipe for target 'guix-web/controller.go' failed <davexunit>I pushed a fix earlier today that you might not have <paroneayea>davexunit: you're going to facepalm on this one, sorry :) <paroneayea>I was like, why is this trying to access 192.168.1.157 <paroneayea>is davexunit trying to intercept my communications?? <paroneayea>tough luck davexunit, that trick only works when I'm on your LAN with you! <davexunit>that was a temporary hack to make my server accessible on the LAN <davexunit>since guix-web-host isn't easily customizable right now. <paroneayea>we still don't knwo what's causing that time thing <paroneayea>davexunit: if you run autogen from inside the environment after a make distclean, sometimes it happens <paroneayea>but doing a git reset to some earlier commit and back (thus, some touch thingamajig) and doing autogen *outside*, then switching into the environnment <davexunit>a 'touch configure' probably would have done the trick <paroneayea>I already liked the existing guix logo so I was like <jgrant>paroneayea: The new, or proposed? *jgrant hasn't seen if they've gone anywhere yet. <jgrant>I don't think I've seen a statement from civodul, mark_weaver, or the like yet. <paroneayea>civodul said he needs to think about it it looks like :) <jgrant>The G(uix)SD logo I really like, Guix proper's proposal it's a take it or leave it thing for me. <davexunit>I also like the Guix one, but it didn't hit me like the GuixSD one did. <jgrant>Bent ribbon to fit into the shape of a GNU head is really simple and clever. <paroneayea>no SVG files submitted yet it looks like though? <jgrant>paroneayea: Is it on his source hosting account, I think gitorious iirc? <taylanub>davexunit: do you think "Compilation fails without this." is sufficient explanation? :) (kind of irritating that the author uses -Werror by default and then it fails to compile...)