Re: Self-contained GuixSD Installer

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Gurjeet Singh <gurjeet@singh.im> skribis:

> Does a self-contained GuixSD installer exist? I tried running GuixSD
> in a VM (in VBox, on macOS), and for that I downloaded the ISO image.
> The ISO image, after a few prompts, then tries to install everything
> from the internet.

The Guix System (formerly known as “GuixSD”) installer cannot be
entirely self-contained because there are many different choices users
can make from there: desktop environments, network services, etc.

However, if you choose a bare-bones, non-graphical kind of system
installation, most if not all of it is already in the ISO.

> If everything is being downloaded and installed from the internet, why
> does the image have to be so huge (~500MB
> guix-system-install-1.2.0.x86_64-linux.iso.xz)?

Good question.

> Is it possible to deliver the /gnu/store on the ISO so that a minimal
> system can be installed and started, without having to connect to the
> Internet?

That should be the case.  We have installation tests in VMs that are all
made without network access:

  https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/tests/install.scm

We cheat a little bit to make sure that absolutely nothing is
downloaded, but like I wrote, a regular install for a non-graphical
system should have little to nothing to download.

HTH,
Ludo’.