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000 - Building a (non)Guix System Install Image

initially written on August 21st, 2024; last updated November 12th, 2024

What is Guix?

The typical line is something like "Guix is a package manager designed to enable reproducible environments, with a focus on libre software." But, what I value Guix, and it's siblings Nix and Aux, for is as tools that enable me to manage what lives on my computer in as much of a deterministic way as possible. And, furthermore to centralize that in just a few files, written in human readable (and Git diff-able) text, which in the case of Guix is the Guile implementation of the Scheme language. Imagine on your current computer if you could include all of the programs you need, none of what you don't need, and not have to remember all the random configuration steps you had to to do.

Guix System is a (GNU)Linux distribution that takes that to the extreme, by making Guix the core package manager of your computer- with Guix managing as much of the system configuration as possible.

Guix development is led by the GNU Project, a free(libre) software collaboration project. GNU is behind a lot of important projects you've used, or at least used by the software you use. GNU also has a strong stance on what software should be used, and so the packages listed in the main Guix channel must somewhat align with that stance. Which in some respects, to some users, can hamper practical usage of Guix. Regardless, I prefer Guix because of its ease of use in many ways compared to other options- especially a more understandable language to me.

A Brief Preface on the Use of Non-Libre Software

I respect the GNU project's push for only including FOSS(free and open source) software, and I appreciate the ecosystem of FOSS software GNU has created. But, to be totally honest, I do not have the energy nor motivation fiddle with trying to find freedom respecting Wi-Fi chips or keyboards. And, its especially problematic when it comes to NVIDIA graphics drivers. So, I will settle for a not totally FOSS OS- but as Nonguix says:

"Those packages are provided as a last resort, should none of the official Guix packages work for you."

Whenever possible, I will use free(for the un-Gnu-initiated free, in this case, means FOSS essentially) software- but when not practical I will use non-free software. I will try to mention whenever I use it in this blog, so those motivated to avoid it will do so. I encourage you to read what GNU says about it and decide for yourself.

If you decide to stick with pure GNU Guix much of this article may be useless to you, instead you should follow the official Guix installation instructions. However, you might still find some things that are useful to you in here.

A (Slightly) Briefer Preface on the Purpose of this Blog

I'm just going through the steps of making Guix usable as a distro for me. I am writing about it to contribute to the existing body of guidance and examples to try to make using Guix more accessible to others as well as as reference for me to look back on. A lot of what's included in here may just be repeating steps covered in official Guix and Nonguix sources, I hope that what I write can still be valuable to fill in any slight gaps that others may be lost or confused about. I will assume general knowledge of Linux, a Bash shell, and Git- but will try to explain as much as possible regardless.

🗒️ A formatting note, I will try to use "$" before commands when listing them, to show it is a command to run in a terminal(unless specified otherwise), the "$" is not itself part of the command. For example: $ example_command

Installing Guix(the Package Manager)

Before a Nonguix image can be built you must have the Guix package manager accessible. Most package managers should have Guix available, for Debian-based package managers you can do $ sudo apt install guix. (Thought you may want to run $ sudo apt update and $ sudo apt upgrade first.)

🪟 If you're on Windows this is a great use-case for WSL. But, a virtual machine or other method could also be used.

Once Guix is installed, try running $ guix pull. On Debian-based distros its very slow, if you're impatient it should be fine to cancel with Control+c.

⚠️ Daemon Socket Not Found ⚠️

If you get the following error when running $ guix pull:

guix pull: error: failed to connect to `/var/guix/daemon-socket/socket': No such file or directory

You need to start the Guix-daemon yourself, likely with $ sudo systemctl start guix-daemon(systemd) or $ sudo service guix-daemon start.

For the latter, you may get the error: /etc/init.d/guix-daemon: line 35: daemonize: command not found

In that case you must install the packages daemonize and opensysusers, in Debian-based distros with $ sudo apt install daemonize opensysusers. (It is possible to avoid opensysusers, but more of a hassle.) You can then run $ sudo service guix-daemon start to start the daemon, and $ sudo update-rc.d guix-daemon defaults to autostart the daemon(supposedly, though I've not found this to actually work- for unknown reasons).

❄️ Installing Guix on Nix ❄️

In your configuration.nix you should just need to add:

services.guix.enable = true;

and then rebuild. However, I had an error where the guix daemon did not start and I fixed it by trying this, somehow:

services.guix = {
	enable = true;
	publish.enable = true;
}

however that shouldn't be needed.

Adding Nonguix as a Channel

Guix channels basically act as cookbooks- telling Guix how to make your packages. Nonguix is the primary channel for non-free(but it's still $0) software. You have to add Nonguix as a channel before you can build the Nonguix system image, luckily that's as easy as editing ~/.config/guix/channels.scm(such as with $ nano ~/.config/guix/channels.scm) and adding the following text to the end of the file:

(cons*
	(channel
		(name 'nonguix)
		(url "https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix")
		;; Enable signature verification:
		(introduction
			(make-channel-introduction
				"897c1a470da759236cc11798f4e0a5f7d4d59fbc"
				(openpgp-fingerprint
					"2A39 3FFF 68F4 EF7A 3D29  12AF 6F51 20A0 22FB B2D5"
				)
			)
		)
	)
	%default-channels
)

Then run $ guix pull to get the channel; it will take a while to run but do not cancel it.

💡 To explain line-by-line:

  1. (cons* creates a list that for our purposes expands the last argument its passed, for example (list "a" (list "b" "c")) evaluates to (a (b c)) while (cons* "a" (list "b" "c")) evaluates to (a b c).

  2. (channel opens the creation of our instance of new channel record.

  3. (name 'nonguix) is self-explanatory and sets the name of the channel to nonguix.

  4. (url "https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix") sets the source URL of the channel.

  5. ;; Enable signature verification: is just a comment telling us what the following code is.

  6. (introduction starts the assignment to the introduction value of the channel record.

  7. (make-channel-introduction opens the creation of an instance of a channel-introduction record as the value of introduction.

  8. "897c1a470da759236cc11798f4e0a5f7d4d59fbc" specifies the Git commit identifier that first describes the channel OpenPGP keys for authorization of commits- protecting you from unauthorized commits to the channel.

  9. (openpgp-fingerprint starts the assignment to the openpgp-fingerprint value of the introduction record.

  10. "2A39 3FFF 68F4 EF7A 3D29 12AF 6F51 20A0 22FB B2D5" declares the fingerprint to check for in commits.

...

  1. %default-channels adds the Guix built in default channels variable to the list.

Future descriptions of Scheme code may not be as thorough, hopefully this gives a decent picture of what it looks like.

Cloning the Nonguix Repository

You need to clone the Nonguix repo so you can build the install image from it, simply run $ git clone https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix.git. If you don't have git installed: install it with your package manager, such as $ sudo apt install git or even $ guix install git but you need to make sure your GUIX_PROFILE is exported for that, as Guix is probably telling you in a hint.

Building the Image

Now simply run:

$ guix system image --image-type=iso9660 ./nonguix/nongnu/system/install.scm

Again, it will take a while to run but do not cancel it.

❗ If you aren't doing this all in one go make sure you've run $ guix pull since September 28th, 2024 when a bug with the installer was fixed.

⚠️ Locale Errors ⚠️

If you get an error that says something like:

Throw to key `encoding-error' with args `("scm_to_stringn" "cannot convert wide string to output locale" 84 #f #f)'.

Or:

guix system: error: corrupt input while restoring archive from #<closed: file 7fc0cb767d20>.

You may need to change /etc/default/locale(such as by running $ sudo nano /etc/default/locale) from LANG=C.UTF-8 to something like LANG=en_US.UTF-8(or if you prefer another locale). Once that's done you should restart for the locale change to take effect.

🪟 In WSL rather than restarting in Linux you should run $ wsl --shutdown in a Command Prompt or Powershell window then start WSL again.

In the unlikely event you want a writable image(if you don't know, you probably don't):

$ guix system image --image-size=7.2GiB ./nonguix/nongnu/system/install.scm

(image-size should be however much you need)

Writing the Built Image to a Removable Drive

Once your build finishes the last line printed is the path to your built image, in my case /gnu/store/qa1drrr1axhj1wk7x7q5z5ibj5a8c1qb-image.iso.

Plug a USB stick into your computer. If you prefer to burn a DVD refer to the official Guix manual.

❗ THIS PROCESS WILL DELETE ALL FILES ON THE USB STICK ❗

On Linux, identify the name of the USB stick. You can then write the built image to the USB drive with the following command, filling in the relevant sections with your specific values:

dd if=[Path To Built Image] of=/dev/[USB Drive Name] bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

For example, assuming the name of the USB stick is sdX and using my above built image path:

dd if=/gnu/store/qa1drrr1axhj1wk7x7q5z5ibj5a8c1qb-image.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

🪟 On Windows with WSL, it's probably easier to move the built image to your Windows drive, then write it to a disk. (But if you really want to follow these steps, then you can use the Linux instructions above.)

So, first copy the built image to your C drive Downloads folder with(of course, filling in the bracketed details):

cp [Path To Built Image] /mnt/c/Users/"[Windows Username]"/Downloads/nonguix-image.iso

For example, for my image, and Windows user:

cp /gnu/store/qa1drrr1axhj1wk7x7q5z5ibj5a8c1qb-image.iso /mnt/c/Users/"Aidan"/Downloads/nonguix-image.iso

Now, locate nonguix-image.iso in your Downloads folder, and use a tool such as Rufus or balenaEtcher to write the image to your USB drive. In Rufus if you don't select DD mode when given the option, it may crash. Once you're done, its safe for you to delete the image from your Downloads folder.

Next

If you're not concerned about losing previous Guix generations, you can now delete the built image from your hard drive with $ guix gc --delete-generations.

In 001 I will cover what to do with this USB stick. If you had any problems with this process, submit a question to github.com/AidanWelch/guix-blog/issues