Re: Re Recent hydra.gnu.org maintenance window

[Clément Lassieur]

Hi Nalin!

Nalin Ranjan <address@hidden> writes:

> Thank you so much Clement.
>
> Any idea by when it could be?

The Berlin build farm is back, so it would be a good idea, I think, to
use only berlin.guixsd.org as substitute (unless hydra.gnu.org is back?
But I haven't heard about it).

As per https://bugs.gnu.org/33151, it is recommended to avoid using
mirror.hydra.gnu.org while hydra.gnu.org is down.

> Also if someone can help me with the experience which I am going to write
> below, I will be really grateful.
>
> It's just that I am not trying to upgrade Guix, but have been trying to
> unsuccessfully install GuixSD for the first time ever on my laptop. In the
> past week or so I have ran the command system init like 7-8 times,and every
> time it fails into 504(Gateway timeout), or Patch not found(may be 404),
> and couple of occasions SHA mismatch. I tried running the default command
> as per documentation, also tried with --substitute-urls specified as
> mirror.hydra.gnu.org and/or berlin.guixsd.org a but end result being same.
> The install halts in the middle. When I specified --keep-going(and left for
> office), when I came back, I saw an infinite loop of 504s, just being
> printed out on the console repetitively for the same package.
>
> Then I tried specifying --fallback, which kind of seems to get the thing
> done. Though it takes innate amount of time to run(guess everything is
> getting compiled from bottom to top), but in the very last step it fails
> saying system error: grub failed to install. Phewwww, back to square one,
> yet another time.

I think your best bet is to use --fallback, with the minimum
installation image, that is: the bare bones setup[1].  You need to have
a good internet connection, and... be patient.

[1]: 
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/en/html_node/Using-the-Configuration-System.html

>  I have a ThinkPad T410 on which I am trying to do this. Currently I have a
> dual boot configuration running Ubuntu and Windows 7. Could that grub
> install failure because of my /boot not being empty and formatted afresh
> for GuixSD? If so, can anyone of you please help me in figuring out how to
> install GuixSD alongside those existing ones(other distros plus special Mr.
> Windows)? Do I need to reformat my /boot to make it fresh so that Grub
> install from GuixSD installation could succeed(not sure if this is the
> reason for failure).
>
> Since I have just this laptop, dedicating to GuixSD build from source is
> blocking me for a very long long time(Just now I spent a week so in trying
> to get it to completion, only to discover very late that a maintenance is
> up in progress). Please suggest as to how should I go about, having GuixSD
> installed along with preserving the older installations on my system?

I have no experience with Dual boot GuixSD, sorry!  Maybe someone else
can help you though.  There are plenty of people in #guix[2].  Don't
hesitate to come and ask questions!  If you don't get answers
immediately, it's a good idea to stay anyway because people may reply
hours later ;-)

[2]: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/contact/irc/

> Let me know if I can help with any other information from my side. though
> new, I can always  dig in to extract the necessary information.
>
> PS:- I am so new to FSF and its software, I may not sound as appropriate as
> I should while putting up my concerns. So please feel free to comment,
> advise or dictate anything that you may feel will let me into the right
> direction.

You're very welcome :-)
Clément