I've been exploring GuixSD for the past few days. Very cool! Even if a little rough around the edges...
Ran into an ugly problem with GRUB being unable to load the initrd, due to having multiple GuixSD installs on the same machine, with identical paths for the bzImage files, but not identical paths for initrd files... Confusingly, when I loaded the kernel+initrd by hand from the grub commandline, it would work! But that was because I was specifying which device to load from... With some help from the folks on #grub on freenode (Thanks to TJ- and Jordan_U!), we identified it was an issue with the way GRUB was configured to search for files: menuentry "GNU with Linux-Libre 4.13.12 (beta)" { search --file --set /gnu/store/q9q8y9rh3jw1qcx6bic1v18qag80z74a-linux-libre-4.13.12/bzImage linux /gnu/store/q9q8y9rh3jw1qcx6bic1v18qag80z74a-linux-libre-4.13.12/bzImage \ --root=/dev/mapper/cryptic \ --system=/gnu/store/bsxnm36vvx2wxc9h3q5l8b5286gw75hr-system \ --load=/gnu/store/bsxnm36vvx2wxc9h3q5l8b5286gw75hr-system/boot \ initrd /gnu/store/7w9dzb6b9vb9gzj61zyqsg4zg6ys4hgb-raw-initrd/initrd } I had two partitions, one on (hd0,msdos4) and one on (crypto0) which both contained /gnu/store/q9q8y9rh3jw1qcx6bic1v18qag80z74a-linux-libre-4.13.12/bzImage, and the search command was returning the one on (hd0,msdos4), and thus setting root (hd0,msdos4). Unfortunately, /gnu/store/7w9dzb6b9vb9gzj61zyqsg4zg6ys4hgb-raw-initrd/initrd was only present on the (crypto0) partition. So, when it booted, I would get the confusing error message: error: file `/gnu/store/7w9dzb6b9vb9gzj61zyqsg4zg6ys4hgb-raw-initrd/initrd' not found And then a kernel panic, as there was no initrd... The suggestion from the #grub folks was to use a UUID or some other more reliable method of finding the correct device to load the kernel and initrd files from. A quick workaround might be to also add a search line for the initrd after loading the kernel: menuentry "GNU with Linux-Libre 4.13.12 (beta)" { search --file --set /gnu/store/q9q8y9rh3jw1qcx6bic1v18qag80z74a-linux-libre-4.13.12/bzImage linux /gnu/store/q9q8y9rh3jw1qcx6bic1v18qag80z74a-linux-libre-4.13.12/bzImage \ --root=/dev/mapper/cryptic \ --system=/gnu/store/bsxnm36vvx2wxc9h3q5l8b5286gw75hr-system \ --load=/gnu/store/bsxnm36vvx2wxc9h3q5l8b5286gw75hr-system/boot \ search --file --set /gnu/store/7w9dzb6b9vb9gzj61zyqsg4zg6ys4hgb-raw-initrd/initrd initrd /gnu/store/7w9dzb6b9vb9gzj61zyqsg4zg6ys4hgb-raw-initrd/initrd } I'm not sure this is the best approach, as it could potentially load kernel+initrd from an untrusted filesystem which may contain a malicious kernel or initrd that simply matches the file paths... I'll look into a proper solution at some point, but it'd be fine if someone beats me to it! live well, vagrant
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature