Hi Guix! I've run into a very irritating problem on my one machine Guix machine (a nicely "blob-free" set-up I put together so it can run pure Guix without problem. And has a great screen (now, again) and keyboard and so would like to be using it!
So I've been running pure Guix System on this machine, a 2008 ThinkPad X200 [Intel Core2 Duo P8600 - 2.4GHz] (installed a blobless Apple Airport Extreme Atheros AR9380 WiFi card so stock Guix linux-libre works fine), and I flashed Libreboot (2016) as the hardware "BIOS" many years back. I've used this machine for a while and it's been fine for many years. But, the AFFS panel started dying/flaking out a year or two ago and I finally replaced it with a new one (which works and is just as gorgeous as its predecessor). Having, immediately I replaced the screen panel, I found that now all 74 of my Guix generations (with different kernels) failed to be able to load. I could unlock Libreboot's GRUB and it could access Guix's listing of generations, but choosing any of these (except for the very first generation of Guix, still on the machine) resulted in failure to boot with Kernel Panic! ,---- | [ 0.285870 ] DMAR: Failed to map dmar2 | [ 0.641835 ] initramfs name without nulterm: etc | [ 0.840105 ] /dev/root: Can't open blockdev | [ 0.840203 ] List of all bdev filesystems: | [ 0.840214 ] ext3 | [ 0.840215 ] ext2 | [ 0.840222 ] ext4 | [ 0.840229 ] vfat | [ 0.840236 ] | [ 0.840252 ] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0) | ..... `---- The set-up: a GPT-partitioned SSD, with a 2M BIOS Boot partition, since no UEFI on this model (at least without modern Libreboot), and full disk LUKS-1 encryption. But it's worked like this for some time, and, indeed, the first Guix generation I had (with a 6.0 kernel) would still work fine, but none of the the other generations. >From the one working Guix generation, I tried a bunch of things - renaming the >cryptroot mount to use proper UUID instead of /dev/mapper/name ; different >initrd settings ; and different kernels. I even went back to a pre 6.0 kernel >(5.18) and that had exactly the same issue. So all of them, except the first >generation Guix with 6.0 kernel failed in the same way. I tried clearing out >generatiions which unfortunately managed to clear out my one working >generation, Generation 1 Linux 6.0 . So now the only way I seem to be able to >get the machine to boot is using a Trisquel LiveUSB. I don't know how replacing the screen panel would have caused this particular set of symptoms, and i'm tempted to think that's a red herring (though I suppose there could have been something with the onboard clock getting messed up? but that seems like it would have affected the first generation too). It seems possible that the GPT+2M BIOS Boot partition 'trick' no longer works, at least with full disk encryption and Libreboot 2016. But if so, what are my options? 1) I don't want to go to a non-encrypted setup (I release I could keep /home encrypted, but I want the full disk encryption). 2) I could try reformattig the drive to plain MBR, but I don't know if that will help. I would have tried this already if it didn't mean doing a full reformat and reinstall. 3) I could try upgrading Libreboot to a modern version - that might help by itself, and/or else I could try to make use of Libreboot's UEFI replacement.† Thoughts on what paths might make sense? Other things to try? (Or even just an explanation of what's actually likely to have gone wrong?) Thanks, Guix! ---Ben † [I'm rather hesitant to upgrade Libreboot though, having burned by a bad experience when I tried upgrading my beloved Thinkpad T60 "IBM"-stamped laptop with an upgraded and beautiful BOEHydis HV150UX1-100 IPS/CCFL 1600x1200 screen that I put a inverted board in and also upgraded to an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU and Apple AirPort Extreme - Qualcomm Atheros AR5BXB112/AR93xx WiFi card. - this was a software-updateble machine, and the other update should have been easy, but it failed and left me with an unbootable machine (and no idea when I will/if ever get a chance to to a physical hardware reflash on it - sort of thing I really wish in-person LUGs were still around for..).] -- 󠆏'(Dr Benjamin Slade 󠆏󠆏󠆏󠆏󠆏(website . <https://lambda-y.net>) 󠆏󠆏󠆏󠆏󠆏`(pgp_fp: ,(B20E 444C FA80 B5F8 15FA 4AD8 6FBF CD68 3B05 2B84)) 󠆏󠆏󠆏󠆏󠆏󠆏󠆏"sent by [mu4e] 1.14.2 in [Emacs] 30.2 with [org-msg] on [Guix System] ([Linux])") [mu4e] <https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html> [Emacs] <https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/> [org-msg] <https://github.com/jeremy-compostella/org-msg> [Guix System] <https://guix.gnu.org/> [Linux] <https://opensource.com/resources/linux>
