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Guix Installation and Setup

This only needs to be done once per machine. If you have already completed the installation and setup, please proceed to perform a build.

Otherwise, you may choose from one of the following options to install Guix:

  1. Using the official shell installer script ⤓ skip to section
    • Maintained by Guix developers
    • Easiest (automatically performs most setup)
    • Works on nearly all Linux distributions
    • Only installs latest release
    • Binary installation only, requires high level of trust
    • Note: The script needs to be run as root, so it should be inspected before it's run
  2. Using the official binary tarball ⤓ skip to section
    • Maintained by Guix developers
    • Normal difficulty (full manual setup required)
    • Works on nearly all Linux distributions
    • Installs any release
    • Binary installation only, requires high level of trust
  3. Using fanquake's Docker image ↗︎ external instructions
    • Maintained by fanquake
    • Easy (automatically performs some setup)
    • Works wherever Docker images work
    • Installs any release
    • Binary installation only, requires high level of trust
  4. Using a distribution-maintained package ⤓ skip to section
    • Maintained by distribution's Guix package maintainer
    • Normal difficulty (manual setup required)
    • Works only on distributions with Guix packaged, see: https://repology.org/project/guix/versions
    • Installs a release decided on by package maintainer
    • Source or binary installation depending on the distribution
  5. Building from source ⤓ skip to section
    • Maintained by you
    • Hard, but rewarding
    • Can be made to work on most Linux distributions
    • Installs any commit (more granular)
    • Source installation, requires lower level of trust

Options 1 and 2: Using the official shell installer script or binary tarball

The installation instructions for both the official shell installer script and the binary tarballs can be found in the GNU Guix Manual's Binary Installation section.

Note that running through the binary tarball installation steps is largely equivalent to manually performing what the shell installer script does.

Note that at the time of writing (July 5th, 2021), the shell installer script automatically creates an /etc/profile.d entry which the binary tarball installation instructions do not ask you to create. However, you will likely need this entry for better desktop integration. Please see this section for instructions on how to add a /etc/profile.d/guix.sh entry.

Regardless of which installation option you chose, the changes to /etc/profile.d will not take effect until the next shell or desktop session, so you should log out and log back in.

Option 3: Using fanquake's Docker image

Please refer to fanquake's instructions here.

Option 4: Using a distribution-maintained package

Note that this section is based on the distro packaging situation at the time of writing (July 2021). Guix is expected to be more widely packaged over time. For an up-to-date view on Guix's package status/version across distros, please see: https://repology.org/project/guix/versions

Debian / Ubuntu

Guix is available as a distribution package in Debian and Ubuntu .

To install:

sudo apt install guix

Arch Linux

Guix is available in the AUR as guix, please follow the installation instructions in the Arch Linux Wiki (live link, 2021/03/30 permalink) to install Guix.

At the time of writing (2021/03/30), the check phase will fail if the path to guix's build directory is longer than 36 characters due to an anachronistic character limit on the shebang line. Since the check phase happens after the build phase, which may take quite a long time, it is recommended that users either:

  1. Skip the check phase
    • For makepkg: makepkg --nocheck ...
    • For yay: yay --mflags="--nocheck" ...
    • For paru: paru --nocheck ...
  2. Or, check their build directory's length beforehand
    • For those building with makepkg: pwd | wc -c

Option 5: Building from source

Building Guix from source is a rather involved process but a rewarding one for those looking to minimize trust and maximize customizability (e.g. building a particular commit of Guix). Previous experience with using autotools-style build systems to build packages from source will be helpful. hic sunt dracones.

I strongly urge you to at least skim through the entire section once before you start issuing commands, as it will save you a lot of unnecessary pain and anguish.

Installing common build tools

There are a few basic build tools that are required for most things we'll build, so let's install them now:

Text transformation/i18n:

  • autopoint (sometimes packaged in gettext)
  • help2man
  • po4a
  • texinfo

Build system tools:

  • g++ w/ C++11 support
  • libtool
  • autoconf
  • automake
  • pkg-config (sometimes packaged as pkgconf)
  • make
  • cmake

Miscellaneous:

  • git
  • gnupg
  • python3

Building and Installing Guix's dependencies

In order to build Guix itself from source, we need to first make sure that the necessary dependencies are installed and discoverable. The most up-to-date list of Guix's dependencies is kept in the "Requirements" section of the Guix Reference Manual.

Depending on your distribution, most or all of these dependencies may already be packaged and installable without manually building and installing.

For reference, the graphic below outlines Guix v1.3.0's dependency graph:

bootstrap map

If you do not care about building each dependency from source, and Guix is already packaged for your distribution, you can easily install only the build dependencies of Guix. For example, to enable deb-src and install the Guix build dependencies on Ubuntu/Debian:

sed -i 's|# deb-src|deb-src|g' /etc/apt/sources.list
apt update
apt-get build-dep -y guix

If this succeeded, you can likely skip to section "Building and Installing Guix itself".

Guile

Corner case: Multiple versions of Guile on one system

It is recommended to only install the required version of Guile, so that build systems do not get confused about which Guile to use.

However, if you insist on having more versions of Guile installed on your system, then you need to consistently specify GUILE_EFFECTIVE_VERSION=3.0 to all ./configure invocations for Guix and its dependencies.

Installing Guile

If your distribution splits packages into -dev-suffixed and non--dev-suffixed sub-packages (as is the case for Debian-derived distributions), please make sure to install both. For example, to install Guile v3.0 on Debian/Ubuntu:

apt install guile-3.0 guile-3.0-dev

Mixing distribution packages and source-built packages

At the time of writing, most distributions have some of Guix's dependencies packaged, but not all. This means that you may want to install the distribution package for some dependencies, and manually build-from-source for others.

Distribution packages usually install to /usr, which is different from the default ./configure prefix of source-built packages: /usr/local.

This means that if you mix-and-match distribution packages and source-built packages and do not specify exactly --prefix=/usr to ./configure for source-built packages, you will need to augment the GUILE_LOAD_PATH and GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH environment variables so that Guile will look under the right prefix and find your source-built packages.

For example, if you are using Guile v3.0, and have Guile packages in the /usr/local prefix, either add the following lines to your .profile or .bash_profile so that the environment variable is properly set for all future shell logins, or paste the lines into a POSIX-style shell to temporarily modify the environment variables of your current shell session.

# Help Guile v3.0.x find packages in /usr/local
export GUILE_LOAD_PATH="/usr/local/share/guile/site/3.0${GUILE_LOAD_PATH:+:}$GUILE_LOAD_PATH"
export GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH="/usr/local/lib/guile/3.0/site-ccache${GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH:+:}$GUILE_COMPILED_LOAD_PATH"

Note that these environment variables are used to check for packages during ./configure, so they should be set as soon as possible should you want to use a prefix other than /usr.

Building and installing source-built packages

IMPORTANT: A few dependencies have non-obvious quirks/errata which are documented in the sub-sections immediately below. Please read these sections before proceeding to build and install these packages.

Although you should always refer to the README or INSTALL files for the most accurate information, most of these dependencies use autoconf-style build systems (check if there's a configure.ac file), and will likely do the right thing with the following:

Clone the repository and check out the latest release:

git clone <git-repo-of-dependency>/<dependency>.git
cd <dependency>
git tag -l  # check for the latest release
git checkout <latest-release>

For autoconf-based build systems (if ./autogen.sh or configure.ac exists at the root of the repository):

./autogen.sh || autoreconf -vfi
./configure --prefix=<prefix>
make
sudo make install

For CMake-based build systems (if CMakeLists.txt exists at the root of the repository):

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<prefix>
sudo cmake --build . --target install

If you choose not to specify exactly --prefix=/usr to ./configure, please make sure you've carefully read the [previous section] on mixing distribution packages and source-built packages.

Binding packages require -dev-suffixed packages

Relevant for:

  • Everyone

When building bindings, the -dev-suffixed version of the original package needs to be installed. For example, building Guile-zlib on Debian-derived distributions requires that zlib1g-dev is installed.

When using bindings, the -dev-suffixed version of the original package still needs to be installed. This is particularly problematic when distribution packages are mispackaged like guile-sqlite3 is in Ubuntu Focal such that installing guile-sqlite3 does not automatically install libsqlite3-dev as a dependency.

Below is a list of relevant Guile bindings and their corresponding -dev packages in Debian at the time of writing.

Guile binding package -dev Debian package
guile-gcrypt libgcrypt-dev
guile-git libgit2-dev
guile-gnutls (none)
guile-json (none)
guile-lzlib liblz-dev
guile-ssh libssh-dev
guile-sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev
guile-zlib zlib1g-dev
guile-git actually depends on libgit2 >= 1.1

Relevant for:

  • Those building guile-git from source against libgit2 < 1.1
  • Those installing guile-git from their distribution where guile-git is built against libgit2 < 1.1

As of v0.5.2, guile-git claims to only require libgit2 >= 0.28.0, however, it actually requires libgit2 >= 1.1, otherwise, it will be confused by a reference of origin/keyring: instead of interpreting the reference as "the 'keyring' branch of the 'origin' remote", the reference is interpreted as "the branch literally named 'origin/keyring'"

This is especially notable because Ubuntu Focal packages libgit2 v0.28.4, and guile-git is built against it.

Should you be in this situation, you need to build both libgit2 v1.1.x and guile-git from source.

Source: https://logs.guix.gnu.org/guix/2020-11-12.log#232527

Building and Installing Guix itself

Start by cloning Guix:

git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git
cd guix

You will likely want to build the latest release. At the time of writing (November 2023), the latest release was v1.4.0.

git branch -a -l 'origin/version-*'  # check for the latest release
git checkout <latest-release>

Bootstrap the build system:

./bootstrap

Configure with the recommended --localstatedir flag:

./configure --localstatedir=/var

Note: If you intend to hack on Guix in the future, you will need to supply the same --localstatedir= flag for all future Guix ./configure invocations. See the last paragraph of this section for more details.

Build Guix (this will take a while):

make -j$(nproc)

Install Guix:

sudo make install

Post-"build from source" Setup

Creating and starting a guix-daemon-original service with a fixed argv[0]

At this point, guix will be installed to ${bindir}, which is likely /usr/local/bin if you did not override directory variables at ./configure-time. More information on standard Automake directory variables can be found here.

However, the Guix init scripts and service configurations for Upstart, systemd, SysV, and OpenRC are installed (in ${libdir}) to launch ${localstatedir}/guix/profiles/per-user/root/current-guix/bin/guix-daemon, which does not yet exist, and will only exist after root performs their first guix pull.

We need to create a -original version of these init scripts that's pointed to the binaries we just built and make install'ed in ${bindir} (normally, /usr/local/bin).

Example for systemd, run as root:

# Create guix-daemon-original.service by modifying guix-daemon.service
libdir=# set according to your PREFIX (default is /usr/local/lib)
bindir="$(dirname $(command -v guix-daemon))"
sed -E -e "s|/\S*/guix/profiles/per-user/root/current-guix/bin/guix-daemon|${bindir}/guix-daemon|" "${libdir}"/systemd/system/guix-daemon.service > /etc/systemd/system/guix-daemon-original.service
chmod 664 /etc/systemd/system/guix-daemon-original.service

# Make systemd recognize the new service
systemctl daemon-reload

# Make sure that the non-working guix-daemon.service is stopped and disabled
systemctl stop guix-daemon
systemctl disable guix-daemon

# Make sure that the working guix-daemon-original.service is started and enabled
systemctl enable guix-daemon-original
systemctl start guix-daemon-original

Creating guix-daemon users / groups

Please see the relevant section in the Guix Reference Manual for more details.

Optional setup

At this point, you are set up to use Guix to build Bitcoin Core. However, if you want to polish your setup a bit and make it "what Guix intended", then read the next few subsections.

Add an /etc/profile.d entry

This section definitely does not apply to you if you installed Guix using:

  1. The shell installer script
  2. fanquake's Docker image
  3. Debian's guix package

Background

Although Guix knows how to update itself and its packages, it does so in a non-invasive way (it does not modify /usr/local/bin/guix).

Instead, it does the following:

  • After a guix pull, it updates /var/guix/profiles/per-user/$USER/current-guix, and creates a symlink targeting this directory at $HOME/.config/guix/current

  • After a guix install, it updates /var/guix/profiles/per-user/$USER/guix-profile, and creates a symlink targeting this directory at $HOME/.guix-profile

Therefore, in order for these operations to affect your shell/desktop sessions (and for the principle of least astonishment to hold), their corresponding directories have to be added to well-known environment variables like $PATH, $INFOPATH, $XDG_DATA_DIRS, etc.

In other words, if $HOME/.config/guix/current/bin does not exist in your $PATH, a guix pull will have no effect on what guix you are using. Same goes for $HOME/.guix-profile/bin, guix install, and installed packages.

Helpfully, after a guix pull or guix install, a message will be printed like so:

hint: Consider setting the necessary environment variables by running:

     GUIX_PROFILE="$HOME/.guix-profile"
     . "$GUIX_PROFILE/etc/profile"

Alternately, see `guix package --search-paths -p "$HOME/.guix-profile"'.

However, this is somewhat tedious to do for both guix pull and guix install for each user on the system that wants to properly use guix. I recommend that you instead add an entry to /etc/profile.d instead. This is done by default when installing the Debian package later than 1.2.0-4 and when using the shell script installer.

Instructions

Create /etc/profile.d/guix.sh with the following content:

# _GUIX_PROFILE: `guix pull` profile
_GUIX_PROFILE="$HOME/.config/guix/current"
if [ -L $_GUIX_PROFILE ]; then
  export PATH="$_GUIX_PROFILE/bin${PATH:+:}$PATH"
  # Export INFOPATH so that the updated info pages can be found
  # and read by both /usr/bin/info and/or $GUIX_PROFILE/bin/info
  # When INFOPATH is unset, add a trailing colon so that Emacs
  # searches 'Info-default-directory-list'.
  export INFOPATH="$_GUIX_PROFILE/share/info:$INFOPATH"
fi

# GUIX_PROFILE: User's default profile
GUIX_PROFILE="$HOME/.guix-profile"
[ -L $GUIX_PROFILE ] || return
GUIX_LOCPATH="$GUIX_PROFILE/lib/locale"
export GUIX_PROFILE GUIX_LOCPATH

[ -f "$GUIX_PROFILE/etc/profile" ] && . "$GUIX_PROFILE/etc/profile"

# set XDG_DATA_DIRS to include Guix installations
export XDG_DATA_DIRS="$GUIX_PROFILE/share:${XDG_DATA_DIRS:-/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/}"

Please note that this will not take effect until the next shell or desktop session (log out and log back in).

guix pull as root

Before you do this, you need to read the section on choosing your security model and adjust guix and guix-daemon flags according to your choice, as invoking guix pull may pull substitutes from substitute servers (which you may not want).

As mentioned in a previous section, Guix expects ${localstatedir}/guix/profiles/per-user/root/current-guix to be populated with root's Guix profile, guix pull-ed and built by some former version of Guix. However, this is not the case when we build from source. Therefore, we need to perform a guix pull as root:

sudo --login guix pull --branch=version-<latest-release-version>
# or
sudo --login guix pull --commit=<particular-commit>

guix pull is quite a long process (especially if you're using --no-substitutes). If you encounter build problems, please refer to the troubleshooting section.

Note that running a bare guix pull with no commit or branch specified will pull the latest commit on Guix's master branch, which is likely fine, but not recommended.

If you installed Guix from source, you may get an error like the following:

error: while creating symlink '/root/.config/guix/current' No such file or directory

To resolve this, simply:

sudo mkdir -p /root/.config/guix

Then try the guix pull command again.

After the guix pull finishes successfully, ${localstatedir}/guix/profiles/per-user/root/current-guix should be populated.

Using the newly-pulled guix by restarting the daemon

Depending on how you installed Guix, you should now make sure that your init scripts and service configurations point to the newly-pulled guix-daemon.

If you built Guix from source

If you followed the instructions for fixing argv[0], you can now do the following:

systemctl stop guix-daemon-original
systemctl disable guix-daemon-original

systemctl enable guix-daemon
systemctl start guix-daemon

Remember to set --no-substitutes in $libdir/systemd/system/guix-daemon.service and other customizations if you used them for guix-daemon-original.service.

If you installed Guix via the Debian/Ubuntu distribution packages

You will need to create a guix-daemon-latest service which points to the new guix rather than a pinned one.

# Create guix-daemon-latest.service by modifying guix-daemon.service
sed -E -e "s|/usr/bin/guix-daemon|/var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/current-guix/bin/guix-daemon|" /etc/systemd/system/guix-daemon.service > /lib/systemd/system/guix-daemon-latest.service
chmod 664 /lib/systemd/system/guix-daemon-latest.service

# Make systemd recognize the new service
systemctl daemon-reload

# Make sure that the old guix-daemon.service is stopped and disabled
systemctl stop guix-daemon
systemctl disable guix-daemon

# Make sure that the new guix-daemon-latest.service is started and enabled
systemctl enable guix-daemon-latest
systemctl start guix-daemon-latest
If you installed Guix via lantw44's Arch Linux AUR package

At the time of writing (July 5th, 2021) the systemd unit for "updated Guix" is guix-daemon-latest.service, therefore, you should do the following:

systemctl stop guix-daemon
systemctl disable guix-daemon

systemctl enable guix-daemon-latest
systemctl start guix-daemon-latest
Otherwise...

Simply do:

systemctl restart guix-daemon

Checking everything

If you followed all the steps above to make your Guix setup "prim and proper," you can check that you did everything properly by running through this checklist.

  1. /etc/profile.d/guix.sh should exist and be sourced at each shell login

  2. guix describe should not print guix describe: error: failed to determine origin, but rather something like:

    Generation 38   Feb 22 2021 16:39:31    (current)
  guix f350df4
    repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git
    branch: version-1.2.0
    commit: f350df405fbcd5b9e27e6b6aa500da7f101f41e7

  3. guix-daemon should be running from ${localstatedir}/guix/profiles/per-user/root/current-guix

Troubleshooting

Derivation failed to build

When you see a build failure like below:

building /gnu/store/...-foo-3.6.12.drv...
/ 'check' phasenote: keeping build directory `/tmp/guix-build-foo-3.6.12.drv-0'
builder for `/gnu/store/...-foo-3.6.12.drv' failed with exit code 1
build of /gnu/store/...-foo-3.6.12.drv failed
View build log at '/var/log/guix/drvs/../...-foo-3.6.12.drv.bz2'.
cannot build derivation `/gnu/store/...-qux-7.69.1.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation `/gnu/store/...-bar-3.16.5.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation `/gnu/store/...-baz-2.0.5.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
guix time-machine: error: build of `/gnu/store/...-baz-2.0.5.drv' failed

It means that guix failed to build a package named foo, which was a dependency of qux, bar, and baz. Importantly, note that the last "failed" line is not necessarily the root cause, the first "failed" line is.

Most of the time, the build failure is due to a spurious test failure or the package's build system/test suite breaking when running multi-threaded. To rebuild just this derivation in a single-threaded fashion (please don't forget to add other guix flags like --no-substitutes as appropriate):

$ guix build --cores=1 /gnu/store/...-foo-3.6.12.drv

If the single-threaded rebuild did not succeed, you may need to dig deeper. You may view foo's build logs in less like so (please replace paths with the path you see in the build failure output):

$ bzcat /var/log/guix/drvs/../...-foo-3.6.12.drv.bz2 | less

foo's build directory is also preserved and available at /tmp/guix-build-foo-3.6.12.drv-0. However, if you fail to build foo multiple times, it may be /tmp/...drv-1 or /tmp/...drv-2. Always consult the build failure output for the most accurate, up-to-date information.

python(-minimal): [Errno 84] Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character

This error occurs when your $TMPDIR (default: /tmp) exists on a filesystem which rejects characters not present in the UTF-8 character code set. An example is ZFS with the utf8only=on option set.

More information: python/cpython#81765

openssl-1.1.1l and openssl-1.1.1n

OpenSSL includes tests that will fail once some certificate has expired. The workarounds from the GnuTLS section immediately below can be used.

For openssl-1.1.1l use 2022-05-01 as the date.

GnuTLS: test-suite FAIL: status-request-revoked

The derivation is likely identified by: /gnu/store/vhphki5sg9xkdhh2pbc8gi6vhpfzryf0-gnutls-3.6.12.drv

This unfortunate error is most common for non-substitute builders who installed Guix v1.2.0. The problem stems from the fact that one of GnuTLS's tests uses a hardcoded certificate which expired on 2020-10-24.

What's more unfortunate is that this GnuTLS derivation is somewhat special in Guix's dependency graph and is not affected by the package transformation flags like --without-tests=.

The easiest solution for those encountering this problem is to install a newer version of Guix. However, there are ways to work around this issue:

Workaround 1: Using substitutes for this single derivation

If you've authorized the official Guix build farm's key (more info here), then you can use substitutes just for this single derivation by invoking the following:

guix build --substitute-urls="https://ci.guix.gnu.org" /gnu/store/vhphki5sg9xkdhh2pbc8gi6vhpfzryf0-gnutls-3.6.12.drv

See this section for instructions on how to remove authorized keys if you don't want to keep the build farm's key authorized.

Workaround 2: Temporarily setting the system clock back

This workaround was described here.

Basically:

  1. Turn off NTP
  2. Set system time to 2020-10-01
  3. guix build --no-substitutes /gnu/store/vhphki5sg9xkdhh2pbc8gi6vhpfzryf0-gnutls-3.6.12.drv
  4. Set system time back to accurate current time
  5. Turn NTP back on

For example,

sudo timedatectl set-ntp no
sudo date --set "01 oct 2020 15:00:00"
guix build /gnu/store/vhphki5sg9xkdhh2pbc8gi6vhpfzryf0-gnutls-3.6.12.drv
sudo timedatectl set-ntp yes

Workaround 3: Disable the tests in the Guix source code for this single derivation

If all of the above workarounds fail, you can also disable the tests phase of the derivation via the arguments option, as described in the official package reference.

For example, to disable the openssl-1.1 check phase:

diff --git a/gnu/packages/tls.scm b/gnu/packages/tls.scm
index f1e844b..1077c4b 100644
--- a/gnu/packages/tls.scm
+++ b/gnu/packages/tls.scm
@@ -494,4 +494,5 @@ (define-public openssl-1.1
     (arguments
      `(#:parallel-tests? #f
+       #:tests? #f
        #:test-target "test"

coreutils: FAIL: tests/tail-2/inotify-dir-recreate

The inotify-dir-create test fails on "remote" filesystems such as overlayfs (Docker's default filesystem) due to the filesystem being mistakenly recognized as non-remote.

A relatively easy workaround to this is to make sure that a somewhat traditional filesystem is mounted at /tmp (where guix-daemon performs its builds). For Docker users, this might mean using a volume, binding mounting from host, or (for those with enough RAM and swap) mounting a tmpfs using the --tmpfs flag.

Please see the following links for more details:

Purging/Uninstalling Guix

In the extraordinarily rare case where you messed up your Guix installation in an irreversible way, you may want to completely purge Guix from your system and start over.

  1. Uninstall Guix itself according to the way you installed it (e.g. sudo apt purge guix for Ubuntu packaging, sudo make uninstall for a build from source).

  2. Remove all build users and groups

    You may check for relevant users and groups using:

    getent passwd | grep guix
getent group | grep guix

    Then, you may remove users and groups using:

    sudo userdel <user>
sudo groupdel <group>

  3. Remove all possible Guix-related directories

    • /var/guix/
    • /var/log/guix/
    • /gnu/
    • /etc/guix/
    • /home/*/.config/guix/
    • /home/*/.cache/guix/
    • /home/*/.guix-profile/
    • /root/.config/guix/
    • /root/.cache/guix/
    • /root/.guix-profile/