Create Guix instances on Ganeti!

$ gnt-instance add -o guix+default my-instance

The default configuration assumes gnt-network is configured and will create an instance with static networking, a serial console, and an SSH server that reuses the hosts /root/.ssh/authorized_keys for root.

It is possible to use a specific Guix commit via an OS parameter:

$ gnt-instance add -o guix+default \
  -O "commit=ecd5db37ff,filesystem=ext4,layout=basic"

Other supported parameters for Guix are branch, repo_uri, and disable_authentication. If any of these parameters are set, guix time-machine will be used to build the image. Otherwise the hosts (root user) Guix version will be used.

You can also build for a specific architecture by passing the 'system' parameter, and even cross-compile a disk image by passing 'target'.

$ gnt-instance add -o guix+default -O system=i686-linux

Behind the scenes, this uses guix system init to deploy a configuration that matches a filesystem and partitioning layout combination.

Related to partitioning and filesystems are the following options:

• fs_type: choose between btrfs, f2fs, xfs, ext2, ext3 and ext4 filesystems.
• layout: you can choose "basic" for installation on one partition, or "advanced" for an LVM layout with separate partitions for /gnu/store, etc. Though in the case of btrfs, the same layout is setup using btrfs subvolumes.
• part_size: specify the partition size.
• luks_passphrase: if you set a value for this option luks will be used (works fine with any layout and filesystem combination).

Note that all layout and filesystem combinations do not work on all disk storage backends. For example, using a combination that creates an LVM setup does not work well when the disk backend is a logical volume itself. You could use a "file" for disk storage backend instead.

$ ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
$ make && sudo make install

For development you may want to pass --with-guix=guix to use the Guix available on $PATH instead of the root users Guix.

• Guix
• util-linux
• multipath-tools
• e2fsprogs
• parted

These are optional:

• jq (for running tests)
• xfsprogs
• btrfs-progs
• lvm2, for LVM support (experimental)
• cryptsetup

• No import and export functionality yet.
• Runs with elevated privileges on the host.
  • Do not use this with untrusted configuration files!