Guix on Trisquel 9
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I've tried installing GNU guix according to this. Used the recommended binary installation script. I am running Triskel 9.0.
Initially my installation did not seem too broken. I was able to run guix search and guix install. Tried installing mps-youtube, but it did not start (some locale related problems). I tried something along the lines of upgrading all packages with guix (assumed it would only update it's own index and packages installed through guix)... I think what I did was "guix pull" and "guix upgrade". It did not help. After a reboot my system was not working anymore.
KDE plasma told me right after login: "All shell packages missing. This is an installation issue, please contact your distribution". Mouse cursor was there, the popup window with the message was there, but nothing more.
I was not able to fix this, so removing guix manually (stopping the services and removing related directories and files) was the only option to go back.
Does anyone here use GNU guix package manager with Trisquel 9.0? If so, how do you do it?
Here's the steps I used to install Guix in January 2021. I used it to install ungoogled-chromium at that time. I hope they work for you. They must have worked well for me, as I see that I proclaimed guix the "ideal trisquel packaging solution" back then. Not sure why I stopped using it. Probably because I over-wrote that partition while hacking the non-free guts out of antiX.
Steps to install guix (Jan. 2021) -
Guix installation:
https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Binary-Installation.html
install nscd dependency
as root:
cd /tmp
wget https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/plain/etc/guix-install.sh
chmod +x guix-install.sh
./guix-install.sh
start the daemon manually with:
sudo ~root/.config/guix/current/bin/guix-daemon --build-users-group=guixbuild
Not as root or sudo, set the locale:
$ guix install glibc-locales
$ export GUIX_LOCPATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale
Installation:
guix search ungoogled
guix install ungoogled-chromium [for ungoogled-chromium, must install the chromium-sandbox package - sudo apt install chromium-sandbox - and restart]
guix install icecat
setting the necessary environment variables by running:
GUIX_PROFILE="/home/[YOUR_USER_NAME_GOES_HERE]/.guix-profile"
. "$GUIX_PROFILE/etc/profile"
Restart
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start the daemon manually
I did not do that and it works.
Besides, I also followed the advice in the manual section 2.6 on installing nscd (name service cache daemon) and X11 fonts.
After resume from suspend on RAM, my laptop is often unable to resolve host names but "sudo systemctl restart nscd.service" fixes the problem immediately.
>"start the daemon manually
I did not do that and it works."
I have that manual start line in there because I tend to use guix on non-systemd distros. I think that with systemd, you have an easier time with guix, as per your command "sudo systemctl restart nscd.service"
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I think that with systemd, you have an easier time with guix, as per your command "sudo systemctl restart nscd.service"
I have a Parabola system using openrc, but I did not try Guix on it (no use I guess). When I read some advice based on systemd, I use https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/OpenRC#Usage to translate to openrc and usually it works. That said, I try to do that as infrequently as I can.
I also used Guix to install ungoogled-chromium. I like Guix, although it seems to take forever to update. Now I use Flatpak instead (just for ungoogled-chromium)
> I also used Guix to install ungoogled-chromium
On which system?
Debian unstable. The issue that I had with Guix is that each "guix pull" took forever for some reason.
> Debian unstable.
With KDE Plasma?
Yes.
Thanks.
Sorry for the inquisitiveness, but this might help dissipate the Triskel 9 + guix mystery.
Some profile folder meddling seems to have been solved in guix since the Triskel 9 version of KDE Plasma (or vice-versa).
EDIT: @Cyberhawk: "If I would install Trisquel 10, I'd still be messing with guix." Maybe that would still be the best thing to do, and see if the problem has been solved in Trisquel 10.
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Thanks, trying that now. The official how-to does not seem to be optimized for running on Trisquel...
What should I answer here:
Permit downloading pre-built package binaries from the project's build farm? (yes/no)
Yes, you should try the pre-built binaries. Allowing guix to build each package on your system can be very time consuming.
Why not give trisquel 10 a chance?
I mean if you already want to try new stuff, it may be a good idea.
Either using netinstaller, liveiso or upgrade a clean etiona install.
I can't answer for Cyberhawk, but I will say my own shiney new Trisquel 10 system is very soon going to get hacked on and I'm going to add guix and compile my own Linux-libre kernels and all kinds of other fun stuff.
It's not that Trisquel 10 is missing anything important. It's just that it's in my nature. Asking "why?" is like asking a scorpion why he stings. He's a scorpion, it's what he does.
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Does anyone here use GNU guix package manager with Trisquel 9.0? If so, how do you do it?
From Guix, I use:
- Dino (when asking for support, Dino people said Trisquel's version is too old)
- Gajim (when asking for support, Gajim's people said Trisquel's version is too old)
- Ungoogled Chromium (only when I have some problems with Abrowser)
- Kristall (Gemini browser, not in Trisquel)
- Darktable (more recent than Trisquel).
I tried Gnome Evolution from Guix because I read some protocol security issue was solved in a later version than Trisquel's but I reverted to Trisquel's version as I had problems with Guix's version.
I periodically do "guix pull" and "guix package -u". Very infrequently "sudo guix pull" (this is to update the Guix daemon).
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@andyprough I got same results, KDE plasma could not start after installing guix and installing the package I wanted (mps-youtube). However, once I pressed Ctrl+Alt+F2 and logged in, mps-youtube was running and it was the version from guix! So a little bit of progress has been made, before mpsyt would just crash before start :-D
Also, this:
start the daemon manually with:
sudo ~root/.config/guix/current/bin/guix-daemon --build-users-group=guixbuild
does not work. Take a close look at the path. What is ~root anyway? I could not find a way to run this command, so ommited it.
Is it possible, that KDE plasma is just not getting along well with guix? And everyone reporting success on using guix in Trisquel is running either Mate or Lxde?
@Ark74 I don't want to try Trisquel 10, because I'm interested in guix specifically. If I would install Trisquel 10, I'd still be messing with guix. It's a source-code based package manager which is something I never tried before (never tried Gentoo or similar systems) and it intrigues me that there is something like that directly from GNU. Also I like the idea of having a good-old Debian based system as a basis, and only compiling certain packages instead of all of them. My main computer is a X200s Thinkpad, so it's not the fastest CPU ever. How would I run my beloved KDE, or even Gnome for that matter, if everything were to be compiled from source?
What is ~root anyway?
It is root's home directory, certainly /root. Indeed, according to 'man dash':
Tilde Expansion (substituting a user's home directory)
A word beginning with an unquoted tilde character (~) is subjected to tilde expansion. All the characters up to a slash (/) or the end of the word are treated as a username and are replaced with the user's home directory. If the username is missing (as in ~/foobar), the tilde is replaced with the value of the HOME variable (the current user's home directory).
The same holds in GNU Bash, which additionally interprets other "words" ("+", "-", numbers) after an unquoted tilde character.
> Also, this:
> start the daemon manually with:
> sudo ~root/.config/guix/current/bin/guix-daemon
>--build-users-group=guixbuild
I'm thinking you don't need that command, since you are on Trisquel, which is a systemd distro. I need to install it on my Trisquel 10 box and try the commands again and then I'll be able to tell you better. I think if guix isn't starting automatically, you will run the command that @avron posted earlier: "sudo systemctl restart nscd.service"
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To be absolutely clear, even when I replaced ~root with /root, it did not work, file not found.
nscd.service is not part of guix, if it is not starting, then I don't understand how starting nscd would help? My issue was not that guix would not start. It was running, "guix search [name]" and "guix install [name]" worked. KDE plasma would not start though, just a black background, mouse cursor and a popup stating "All shell packages missing".
I will try it out again, but installing and enabling nscd beforehand.
Sounds like a KDE problem, not an nscd service problem. guix must be replacing something that KDE uses as a system file, for some reason. You may have run into a serious guix bug.
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nscd.service is not part of guix, if it is not starting, then I don't understand how starting nscd would help?
There was some confusion. I don't expect that using helps to make Guix start if it does not.
I just mentioned that, once you have Guix installed and working, the Guix manual recommends to use nscd to avoid problems with apps installed via Guix (see explanations in the Guix manual). For this "sudo apt install nscd" is enough. Then, I mentioned that this sometimes have side effects after suspend/resume (name resolution fails for certain names) but restarting the nscd service manually solves the effect.
Personally, I installed Guix on Trisquel several times (different computer and full reinstall), I always installed nscd *after* installing Guix and everything always worked fine.
There seems to be some lack of cooperativeness between KDE Plasma and Guix on Trisquel 9, as this earlier thread also suggests:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/plasma-cannot-start-all-shell-packages-missing#comment-158807.
Wow, you are right, same wording too:
>"Plasma cannot start. All shell packages missing."
Guix must be replacing some important KDE package. I wish someone could get into their error logs and try to find something that would give us a clue. It's quite a good mystery now.
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I installed and used guix as per andyprough and everything worked as expected until I installed gnucash. At reboot I couldn't log to X. Something about Xauthority which I fixed. I tried removing guix to reinstall it but when I do rm -rf /gnu I get all files in folder cannot remove Read-only file system
I need to delete the folder because guix script tells me the it cannot continue.
Any help?
This is a good guide to using guix: https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2021/04/lets-try-guix.html
It has a section near the bottom of the page on how to uninstall guix, but also a section on how to roll back your packages if they are not working. Probably anyone trying guix should read a more in-depth guide like this, if not reading all of guix's own information.
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The Guix manual has all instructions clear, easy and maintained (unlike any other page).
It is at in section 2.1 https://guix.gnu.org/fr/manual/devel/en/html_node/Binary-Installation.html.
In there, follow the first note and, once done, as it says, follow the "application setup" (2.6) and "getting started" (4) links. That means you just skip the rest of 2.1. 2.7 says how to update. Do the "Guix daemon update" once only (no need to redo, or very rarely).
If you have problems, join the guix help mailing list. There are a huge number of questions I don't understand but when I had a problem once, someone provided a very good answer. I mentioned Trisquel in my question, so perhaps you can find it in the archive.
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@andyprough wow that did the trick. There were forgotten profiles that locked the folder. Thank you.
@Avron this is a nice tip. I will definitely post a question there. Cheers.
I installed guix on Trisquel 10 tonight, using the above instructions. The good news is that everything went well, no crashes or errors or problems. I'm not using Triskel or KDE though, I'm just using the regular Mate desktop, so your experience on Triskel may differ.
The not-so-good news is that the versions of software on guix aren't new enough that they are worth me bothering to install for the most part. guix's ungoogled-chromium is version 89, but the latest version from the ungoogled-chromium developers is 93 - so the guix version is basically so old that it's unsafe to run.Libreoffice version on guix is 6.4.7.2, which is quite an old release, over a year old, and one which already reached its end of life over 10 months ago.
I used to install guix for its newer packages. If it's just going to be a collection of older and/or no longer officially supported packages, then I won't be installing it in the future.
Makes me wonder if the guix project is losing developers, and just not able to keep up any longer.
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