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<codemac>hi! does anyone here run guix as more of a "minion" package management interface for their local user, while the distro they use is something different (arch / debian / etc)?

<codemac>Getting the "right" distro set uup on many of my machines is lots of work, and I've been thinking that I can have guix on all these machines, and use it to manage the packages I want to install as a *user*, and top level services managed by the main distro (think ssh to the box, a starting shell, and the kernel by debian, everything else user guix)

<anthk_>upgrading guix to get linux-libre 4.1, nice :D

<anthk_>one day I'll try to write something for TADS3

<remi`bd>codemac: yes

<remi`bd>I use arch for my system’s base packages, and guix for others

<codemac>remi`bd: are there any lessons learned I should know about?

<remi`bd>not for me, sorry :{

<civodul>Hello Guix!

<crocket>How does guix take care of installing .desktop files and making them available to desktop environments?

<sneek>crocket, you have 2 messages.

<sneek>crocket, rekado says: I very much recommend reading the Guix documentation. It is quite clear on what Guix is used for and how it works.

<sneek>crocket, zacts says: his/her gist on the systemd service for guix is gone, and zacts forgot to save the config

<crocket>zacts, http://dpaste.com/2T8DPFQ is my /etc/systemd/system/guix-daemon.service

<crocket>Refer to it in a week.

<crocket>In a week, it expires.

<jackdaniel>sneek: commands

<jackdaniel>sneek: help

<crocket>I read "GNU Guix is a functional package management tool for the GNU system." on http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Introduction.html#Introduction

<crocket>What is the GNU system?

<crocket>GuixSD and other GNU distros?

<crocket>GuixSD and hurd.

<jackdaniel>gnu system is any system with gnu userspace, so also other distributions, not only guixsd

<crocket>What is gnu userspace? Does it include ubuntu and archlinux?

<jackdaniel>tough i foresee some distributions future - evolution from GNU/Linux to SystemD/Linux

<crocket>ha

<jackdaniel>crocket: yes, it does include

<jackdaniel>systemd didn't eat all of it yet ^_^

<crocket>It seems GuixSD uses roco? instead of systemd.

<jackdaniel>dmd I think, but I'm not using GuixSD regularily

<jackdaniel>deco is cli frontend I think

<crocket> http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Using-the-Configuration-System.html#Using-the-Configuration-System

<jackdaniel>but what I say might be wrong, I'm just newb here :p

<crocket>NixOps and SaltSatck provide configuration management

<crocket>Does Guix provide configuration management as well?

<crocket>I am interested in Guix configuration management because it lets me use a proper functional programming language called guile.

<crocket>The usage of python in SaltStack is toxic.

<jackdaniel>no idea

<crocket>Guix provides NixOps-style configuration management.

<crocket>Is GuixSD ok to use?

<crocket>jackdaniel, ^^

<rekado_>crocket: I'm using GuixSD on two machines: my primary laptop and one dedicated to audio work.

<rekado_>(recording, live music, etc)

<rekado_>it is very much usable.

<crocket>rekado_, Do you use configuration management as well?

<jackdaniel>crocket: as I said, I'm not regular user. I think it is, tough if you have wifi card with blob driver, then it won't work with libre-linux kernel

<crocket>Ouch

<rekado_>each of these machines has its own configuration file, specifying what disks to mount, what user accounts to create, what packages to install system-wide.

<rekado_>so yes, you could say I'm using configuration management.

<crocket>in guile?

<rekado_>but that's a very vague term, so I don't know what you mean by it.

<crocket>I meant system configuration management as done by SaltStack and NixOps.

<rekado_>I haven't used those.

<rekado_>see http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/System-Configuration.html#System-Configuration

<crocket>With SaltStack, you can specify the contents of some system files and the list of installed packages.

<crocket>With SaltStack, you can also enable and start system services.

<crocket>rekado_, SaltStack does similar things to Guix system configuration manager.

<crocket>The problem of SaltStack is everything is in YAML and python.

<crocket>It is not easy to write YAML.

<D1ver>hello :) i just installed guixsd on my laptop. the installation completed successfully but my system doesnt boot. the last boot message i can see is "switched to clocksource tsc"

<crocket>rekado_, What is the best desktop environment on GuixSD?

<rekado_>I use Xfce.

<D1ver>any ideas? :s Its an intel integrated graphics laptop.. i tried "nomodeset"

<crocket>Alpha

<civodul>crocket: does http://dpaste.com/2T8DPFQ work correctly? it would probably make sense to ship it

<civodul>D1ver: then it just hangs?

<rekado_>I just noticed that R no longer builds. That's probably because GCC 4.9 is the default now (?) but R has gfortran 4.8 as an input. Adding gfortran 4.9 and updating the R package now.

<D1ver>civodul: yes it just stops

<D1ver>civodul: no panic or anything.. cant get to other terminals with ctrl-alt-f2 or anything

<D1ver>googling seems to suggest its hanging on the loading whatevers after 'switching to clocksource tsc" but i dont know what that is lol

<civodul>rekado_: yes, that's probably the problem

<civodul>D1ver: i've never seen that, sounds like a kernel issue, but i have no idea :-/

<civodul>the installation image did boot though, right?

<civodul>and it's supposed to be the same kernel

<D1ver>yea it booted from the usb stick with no problems

<civodul>weird

<civodul>in GRUB, can you try pressing 'e' on the menu entry, and then adding '--repl' to the command line, and finally booting with C-x?

<D1ver>woah ok i am in a scheme prompt

<D1ver>ok

<D1ver>i don't even know what just happened

<D1ver>i tried ,bt for a backtrace. it spat out some hex number. I tried ,q to continue, the boot process did some more stuff. I got prompted to enter some keystrokes to increase entropy or something

<D1ver>and now i'm in x11 and it seems to be working..

<alezost>D1ver: those keystrokes were for ssh-daemon (it happens only for the first time it is started)

<D1ver>alezost: cool. It seems to be working.

<D1ver>stupid question #2, i followed the installation instructions and filled in my name as a user in /etc/config.scm... what is the password for that account? I can only log in as root with no password

<alezost>civodul: I think that systemd service should work. At least a slightly different version from <https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/guix> used to work for me. Here it is: <http://paste.debian.net/259350>

<alezost>D1ver: I think you need to set the password for your user (and for root of course)

<civodul>thanks alezost

<D1ver>alezost: I can update roots password with passwd, but what about the user one? (sorry i'm used to adding users with 'adduser' / 'useradd'

<alezost>D1ver: "passwd <user>" maybe

<crocket>civodul, It works on ubuntu.

<crocket>I think it should work on any system that runs systemd.

<D1ver>alezost: thanks! working

<alezost>np

<crocket>In actual package, "--build-users-group=guix-builder" has to be parameterized.

<crocket>Other than that, it's ok.

<crocket>How does guix install .desktop files and make them available to desktop environments?

<civodul>crocket: currently it doesn't

<crocket>How does GuixSD handle it?

<civodul>iyzsong: your thoughts on .desktop files? ↑

<crocket>Does GuixSD not install .desktop files in /usr/share/applications ?

<civodul>there's no /usr on GuixSD :-)

<crocket>Or ~/.local/share/applications?

<civodul>so the goal is to honor them, but that is not implemented yet

<crocket>Does it mean people live without .desktop files on GuixSD?

<civodul>i certainly live without them because i don't use the "desktop environment" ;-)

<civodul>for Xfce, i don't know exactly what happens

<civodul>i guess you get icons for the default apps, but not for them installed afterwards?

<civodul>but that's really something that needs to be addressed

<iyzsong>I think if the package ship .desktop files and XDG_DATA_DIRS contains the right value, it should just work fine

<civodul>ah ok

<civodul>work as in "the icon shows up"?

<iyzsong>Yes, I think so, but we don't update mime database with desktop files now, so the 'default-application' will not work rightly.

<iyzsong>crocket: what functions do you expect from desktop files? :-)

<crocket>I want .desktop files to show up in gnome shell.

<crocket>gnome

<iyzsong>crocket: I think put "$HOME/.guix-profile/share" in gnome-shell's XDG_DATA_DIRS should work.

<crocket>iyzsong, How is it going to work automatically?

<crocket>How does 'man' work?

<crocket>Anyway, it sounds fascinating to isolate each user profile.

<iyzsong>As long as the applications (gnome-shell does) implement the XDG standard, which requires it to respect XDG_DATA_DIRS..

<crocket>How is GuixSD going to add ~/.guix-profile/share to XDG_DATA_DIRS automatically?

<crocket>How is Guix going to do so on other distros?

<crocket>What about the conflict between systemd and dmd?

<iyzsong>there has a ~/.guix-profile/etc/profile, on GuixSD, it was source by bash (/etc/profile). I think you may want to do the same on your distro.

<crocket>I thought /etc/profile was supposed to be a system profile.

<rekado_>patches for gfortran-4.9 and R have been sent to the mailing list. They are very small and I'd like to push them very soon.

<crocket>So, it's all manual on other distros.

<crocket>I think it should be done automatically on GuixSD.

<crocket>Otherwise, beginners will be repelled.

<iyzsong>yes, on GuixSD, we basically source "$HOME/.guix-profile/etc/profile" 'automatically'. And on other distro, you could do this manually.

<rekado_>crocket: "conflict between systemd and dmd" --> Guix as a package manager does not use dmd. It's only the Guix System Distribution that does.

<rekado_>so there is no conflict.

<crocket>iyzsong, What about ~/.guix-profile/share/applications?

<crocket>Is it added to XDG_DATA_DIRS automatically on GuixSD?

<iyzsong>crocket: Yes, the correct value is '~/.guix-profile/share' though.

<crocket>Then, gnome shell would have no problem with .desktop files

<crocket>iyzsong, Is it ok to use Guix system configuration management capacity on ubuntu?

<crocket>Guix feels foreign on ubuntu...

<iyzsong>What to manage? I think you won't want to run 'guix system ..', that would override ubuntu's files.

<crocket>ok

<crocket>So, guix is designed to work with GuixSD.

<crocket>Guix is nice for trying guile emacs on ubuntu.

<crocket>Does GuixSD keep only the latest version of packages as archlinux does?

<civodul>actually you could try 'guix system vm', even if you're on another distro

<civodul>that always works

<crocket>Does GuixSD have releases?

<crocket>like ubuntu?

<crocket>ubuntu 15.04, 14.04, ...

<jackdaniel>yes

<crocket>How does a GuixSD release work with Guix?

<crocket>Guix seems to contain only the latest versions of packages.

<iyzsong>crocket: We does have packages with different versions in the guix git repository, and one advantage with Guix is you can install different version of the same package.

<crocket>iyzsong, Does it mean each GuixSD release refer to only one version of every package?

<iyzsong>crocket: No, for examples we have gcc-4.8, gcc-4.9, gcc-5.1, etc (different version). And emacs, emacs-no-x (different variant)

<crocket>Does GuixSD 1.0 refer to gcc-4.8 and GuixSD 1.5 to gcc-5.1?

<iyzsong>the 'release' is just a snapshot (tag, mainly for the Guix package manager I think) of the git repository. I won't think GuixSD have releases.

<crocket>hmm....

<crocket>The git repository of guix?

<iyzsong>you can (and should) update as fast as you can :-)

<crocket>I think it is the same rolling release model of archlinux.

<rekado_>"So, guix is designed to work with GuixSD." --- Guix is a package manager. I use it on Ubuntu, CentOS and Fedora.

<crocket>Guix cannot be allowed to break GuixSD, and most Guix users will be on GuixSD.

<rekado_>As in Guix the whole graph of depencies is closed over for each package it is only consequential to extend it to a whole system.

<rekado_>"most Guix users will be on GuixSD" <--- I don't think that's true.

<rekado_>on our clusters we have lots of users of Guix, and only one of them is a user of GuixSD (me).

<crocket>clustes?

<crocket>clusters?

<rekado_>a cluster is a set of high-performance machines that can be used to compute "jobs" for many users with high compute demands.

<crocket>So, a cluster of servers

<rekado_>I wrote about using Guix in an HPC environment here: http://elephly.net/posts/2015-04-17-gnu-guix.html

<crocket>hmm

<crocket>GuixSD looks like a better alternative to Archlinux now...

<rekado_>Well, I don't call them "servers" because they don't serve anything in the traditional sense. They are called "nodes".

<crocket>But, gnome shell blocks access to Win+L after hours.

<rekado_>Gnome shell hasn't been packaged for Guix yet.

<crocket>What desktop environments do I have on GuixSD?

<rekado_>we have bits and pieces of Gnome, but I think the only complete modern(ish) desktop environment on GuixSD is Xfce.

<rekado_>of course you can also use a custom environment with a window manager of your choice.

<rekado_>we have ratpoison, and possibly more.

<crocket>I can use gnome shell, unity, and KDE.

<crocket>XFCE is fine, too

<rekado_>my "desktop environment" is actually Emacs. I primarily use Xfce to load Emacs.

<crocket>rekado_, Do you know a faster way of executing 'guix pull'?

<iyzsong>I just 'git clone` the repo to ~/.config/guix/latest, and never run 'guix pull' anymore (don't know what will happend if I run)

<crocket>iyzsong, Why?

<iyzsong>crocket: I'm happy with run git commands mannually. the 'guix pull' download the git repository as a tarball, much slower than 'git pull'.

<crocket>It seems guix pull needs optimization

<rekado_>crocket: as a developer I mostly use git. Only on the audio laptop I use "guix pull" (and yes, it is slow).

<rekado_>with a git checkout you only need to compile files that have changed. With "guix pull" everything is compiled and that takes time.

<crocket>rekado_, What if you use substitutes?

<crocket>'guix pull' uses substitutes

<rekado_>I don't know what you mean.

<crocket>substitutes

<crocket>If you enable substitutes from hydra, 'guix pull' pulls built binaries.

<rekado_>afaik the .scm files (e.g. of all the package modules) are compiled to .go.

<crocket>Since coreutils couldn't be built during 'guix pull', I had to enable hydra.

<iyzsong>the 'pull' is to download/compile/deploy the distro (git repo), no packages (except guile) will be substituted.

<crocket>Somehow, 'guix pull' downloaded coreutils substitute

<crocket>gcc, coreutils, ...

<iyzsong>Yes, guile depends on it. You can try with '--bootstrap' to use the bootstrap Guile instead, see the Manual for more infomation :-)

<crocket>guix commands start with 'warning: failed to install locale: Invalid argument'

<crocket>Why?

<iyzsong>crocket: hm, it's a known issue, See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-02/msg00315.html for solution.

<crocket>iyzsong, Is there an alternative to autofs on GuixSD?

<crocket>It doesn't have autofs

<crocket>Does the warning occur on foreign distros only?

<crocket>Even with LOCPATH=/usr/share/locale, I still see "warning: failed to install locale: Invalid argument"

<rekado_>crocket: I don't see this on GuixSD.

<crocket>rekado_, Do you have autofs on GuixSD?

<iyzsong>crocket: that may reported by 'guix-daemon', did you run the 'guix-daemon' with LOCPATH?

<crocket>no

<iyzsong>crocket: There is no 'autofs' package in Guix yet, I think you'd like to package it :-)

<crocket>I ran guix-daemon with LOCPATH, but it doesn't remove the warning.

<crocket>My locale is en_US.UTF-8

<iyzsong>crocket: so, it have to use the locale installed by Guix? I don't know the detail.

<iyzsong>according to http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-05/msg00282.html

<crocket>Is it possible to make 'guix pull' run quick?

<efraim>crocket: how long does it take on your system? mine is about an hour, so I run it before I go to bed

<crocket>I don't know exactly.

<crocket>But, it took a while.

<crocket>On ubuntu, 'sudo apt-get update' takes 2-3 minutes.

<crocket>'guix pull' takes longer.

<civodul>crocket: yeah, it takes too long (~15 mn on my quad-core laptop)

<civodul>hopefully we'll address it soon

<rekado_>davexunit: I read about PAM. It's useful only to authenticate users (e.g. by asking it whether a provided password and username are valid). We cannot use it to spawn a new process as another user.

<rekado_>Instead we'd have to run guix-web as root and then use Guile features to become a different user.

<davexunit>rekado_: sure.

<rekado_>dependent on the result of asking the PAM oracle.

<davexunit>yeah, that's what I had in mind.

<rekado_>okay

<davexunit>and perhaps 'guix web' could still be run as an unprivileged user, with the limitation that the only acceptable user authentication is for the user that ran it.

<davexunit>and the root 'guix web' can have the super setuid powers

<rekado_>(I'm disappointed to see that it's still impossible for a process on Linux to gain permissions at runtime after talking to an auth server. )

*rekado_ wants the Hurd.

<davexunit>guixsd aaaalmost boots in a container

<davexunit>with a user namespace

<davexunit>but chown("/var/guix/profiles/per-user/alice", 1000, 998) returns EINVAL

<davexunit>I wonder why. the man page for chown(2) doesn't specify what causes this return code.

<davexunit>perhaps uid 1000 and gid 998 need mappings into the parent user namespace?

<efraim>EINVAL = error invalid?

<davexunit>yeah, invalid argument.

<amz3>that is cool

<remi`bd>davexunit: might be raised by the filesystem drivers

<davexunit>I think I need to expand the range of uid/gip mapping

<davexunit>right now I only map a single user, the one that booted the container

<davexunit>because specifying a uid/gid range greater than 1 failed :(

<civodul>davexunit: chown(2) here says: EINVAL Invalid flag specified in flags.

<civodul>oh but this is for fchownat i guess

<civodul>hey remi`bd

<civodul>remi`bd: i looked at what you pushed and it looks pretty nice!

<remi`bd>hi

<remi`bd>well, I’m happy to have finally been able to move forward on these bindings

<remi`bd>I’ll send a report on the lists later this afternoon

<civodul>great

<civodul>in your message could you say a word on how to test it?

<civodul>BTW, i saw there are unit tests, this is perfect

*civodul is toying with a cpio writer in Scheme, for the initrd

<remi`bd>you mean how to get a simple GnuNet peer running? or more detailed explanations about the bindings themselves?

<civodul>yeah how to get GNUnet running so that one can try out the bindings

<civodul>i guess it's a matter of starting gnunet-arm essentially?

<remi`bd>yes, and writing a small .conf

<remi`bd>it’ll be in the report!

<civodul>cool!

<remi`bd>do you want to generate the initrd directly in scheme?

<davexunit>civodul: awesome!

<civodul>remi`bd: yes, though we still need gzip

<civodul>not that it was particularly an urgent thing to do, but you know...

<davexunit>scratch that itch ;)

<civodul>exactly :-)

<amz3>nice guile-gnunet is coming

<anthk_>good afternoon to everyone

<mark_weaver>civodul: fwiw, I wrote a tar reader in pure guile not too long ago, for Mike's 100-guile-programs tutorial initiative thingy (I forget what it was called)

<mark_weaver>anyway, gotta run for now... going to the FSF to help with the mailing...

<davexunit>mark_weaver: I'll be over after work tonight. not sure if you'll still be there.

<mark_weaver>davexunit: cool! yes, I plan to stay late, assuming we don't finish unexpectedly early :)

<davexunit>awesome. see ya then, probably.

<mark_weaver>:)

<mark_weaver>civodul: oh right, you need cpio because that's the initrd format or something :)

<paron_remote>hello, *

<mark_weaver>hi paron_remote! (and bye also, as I'm heading out very soon :)

<davexunit>hey paron_remote

<paron_remote>:)

<davexunit>I hope we get all this ruby stuff sorted out soon... growing tired.

<efraim>finally got around to setting up my git clone correctly and now waiting for make to finish

<efraim>should've timed it to compare it to guix pull

<amz3>efraim: what does it mean "compare it to guix pull" ?

<efraim>compare the time

<amz3>ok the difference of time between git pull && make and guix pull

<amz3>you use guixsd?

<efraim>also some people point .config/guix/latest to git

<efraim>i'm on debian

<amz3>hmm good idea

<amz3>ah ok

<amz3>it doesn't work to set GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH

<amz3>I stopped using debian, broke it twice last year (I coulnd not fix without a fresh install). I think I am a good tester of guix robustness ;)

<davexunit>I do the symlink thing

<davexunit>works well

<davexunit>until I do lots of development and fuck something up ;)

<davexunit>then I temporarily remove the symlink

<efraim>only recent problems I had with debian was when I upgraded my raspbian to wheezy and systemd and that failed hard

<alezost>[18:31]<amz3> it doesn't work to set GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH ← What do you mean?

<efraim>otherwise running sid has worked well for me for years

<civodul>mark_weaver: yes, i remember your tar reader, and i think we should use it eventually!

<efraim>except for the freezes

<civodul>mark_weaver: that would notably simplify bootstrapping

<amz3>you set GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH to git repository

<alezost>oh, that; I've never tried setting it the git repo

<efraim>davexunit: `git pull && make`, does it run over all the files or only the changed ones?

<davexunit>efraim: only the changed files.

<davexunit>this is the nature of make.

<efraim>compiling guix/import/json.scm failed for me

<davexunit>error?

<efraim>sorry, kid didn't want to go to sleep, had to put him down in the stroller

<efraim>not exactly sure what the error is, https://pastee.org/5pj9x

<civodul>efraim: you're missing guile-json, see https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Requirements.html#Requirements

<efraim>civodul: thanks, i figured it could be something like that

<civodul>normally that module is compiled only if guile-json was detected at configure time

<civodul>so maybe it was first detected, then it was removed, and then boom

<efraim>i reinstalled them, reconfigured, and now make-ing again

<efraim>doh, still getting the error

<efraim>i'll have to look at it tomorrow, getting late here

<civodul>rekado_: could you review and possibly commit the latest Rythmbox patch?

<civodul>(since you started the review)

<civodul>efraim: ok!

<davexunit>damn it. can't go to the FSF because I forgot that I have a kid to watch tonight.

<absorto>hello! so I booted the usb image, but I cannot connect to the network. ifconfig -a reports my NIC as enp8s0, but it doesn't say UP or RUNNING, even after I ifconfig enp8s0 192.168.105.65 netmask 255.255.255.0 up. Help!

<bavier`>absorto: do you have a dhcp server on you network?

<absorto>bavier`: I do. I also tried dhclient enp8s0, no luck.

<civodul>absorto: you have to set it up manually first: ifconfig enp8s0 up

<davexunit>absorto: ifconfig enp8s0 up && dhclient enp8s0

<absorto>civodul: right! that worked

<absorto>so... how come it didn't come up if I gave the address and mask?

<remi`bd>absorto: you’re not using a static ip, that’s why

<remi`bd>your ip address and network mask are given to you by another computer, a DHCP server; when you call `dhclient`, you ask this server for an ip address

<remi`bd>that’s why your ip address is said to be dynamically allocated, or simply dynamic

<absorto>remi`bd: I understand that. However if I choose to ignore the DHCP server and grab any IP I want I should at least be able to ping myself, right?

<remi`bd>well, not through enp8s0

<absorto>oh! why not?

<remi`bd>because the DHCP server is responsible for the mapping “computer ↔ ip address” in its network

<absorto>okay but.. I mean in other machines I can just choose whatever Ip address. I might not get to the internet or even other network devices, but at least I can ping the address I chose!

<absorto>anyway, I'm online and going on with the installation

<remi`bd>oh

<remi`bd>in this case, I apologize

<absorto>which brings me to another question: the manual doesn't say anything about choosing a password for the user I configured. Will I be asked later or what?

<absorto>no need for apologies remi`bd :-) I'm just confused that a command like ifconfig enp8s0 10.0.0.1 up wouldn't bring up the interface.

<remi`bd>absorto: you’re supposed to specify your users initial password as root

<absorto>oh! so: passwd --root /mnt absorto?

<civodul>absorto: the first time you log in, you can only log in as root; from there, you have to run 'passwd absorto' or similar

IRC channel logs

2015-06-24.log