bug#20071: none

[Tomáš Čech]

On Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 09:35:42AM +0100, Tomas Cech wrote:
> At Fri, 05 Dec 2014 00:04:23 +0100,
> Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> > Tomas Cech <address@hidden> skribis:
> >
> > > I tried to install Guix as alternative OS to my Gentoo and openSUSE
> > > installations to give a try. I tried unsupported scenario -
> > > installation on LVM volume and separate /boot partition until I was
> > > told it is unsupported. Separate boot wasn't hard as I had to just
> > > copy generated files so they are loaded.
> >
> > OK, but there’s still an open bug on that topic.  :-)
> > http://bugs.gnu.org/19220
>
> Good, I'll give a try again.
>
> > > 1] if you set device to partition (and not to disk) in your 
> > grub-configuration like this:
> > >
> > >  (bootloader (grub-configuration
> > >                (device "/dev/sda4")))
> >
> > Why would you want to use a partition and not a disk?  I didn’t know
> > this was even possible.
>
> Because this way I can separate Grub managed by Guix and Grub from my
> Gentoo. As I'm playing with that on my notebook I need for work, this
> way can reduce risks.
>
> I'm not sure how Guix installer can manipulate with grub.cfg and I'd
> like to always have some working system...
>
> > > `guix system init' will fail on grub installation. By default Grub
> > > tries to fit in the beginning of partition and fails if it can't fit
> > > in. I asked about this behaviour on Grub mailing list and it seems
> > > that there are two options:
> > >
> > >   a] add `--force' to command line and use block list for keeping information 
> > about position of Grub's core.img
> > >   b] use filesystem which allows embedding - BtrFS or ZFS
> > >
> > > I verified both options (a] and then b] with BtrFS) and it no longer fails.
> > >
> > > But,
> > > ad a] - I don't feel safe passing `--force' to grub-install every
> > > time. So if installation fails on this point and you'd like to use
> > > your FS anyway, you can pass `--no-grub' to `guix system init' and
> > > then rung grub-install manually.
> > >
> > > ad b] - I don't feel safe using still experimental BtrFS.
> >
> > OK.  I think the conclusion for Guix is to leave the defaults unchanged.
> > Perhaps we could add a ‘force?’ field to the ‘grub-configuration’ data
> > type to allow those who know what they doing to get the effect of
> > ‘--force’.  WDYT?

After giving some more thoughts and after more experience with the process I
do agree that exposing `--force' parameter into grub-configuration is good idea.

I'm filing bug for that.

pgprfz1QAFm2L.pgp
Description: PGP signature