Subject: Re: bug#24220: "failed to unpack source code" on guix pull

From: Leo Famulari <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2016 12:21:23 -0400

On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 08:59:03AM +0000, ng0 wrote:
> Pjotr Prins <[email-masked]> writes:
> > On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 06:05:17PM -0400, Harry Prevor wrote:
> >> Hey all,
> >> 
> >> I'm running GuixSD on a Thinkpad X200. I typically run 'guix pull'
> >> almost every day without any troubles, but about two days ago I
> >> started getting this error every time I ran the command leaving me
> >> unable to update my system:
> >> 
> >> >Starting download of /tmp/guix-file.JNdnA7
> >> >From
> >> >http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/snapshot/master.tar.gz...
> >> > ….tar.gz                                   1.4MiB/s 00:07 |
> >> >10.4MiB transferred
> >> >unpacking
> >> >'/gnu/store/q4zzpxpbbhwmwh4snisymlpf0p24ddk7-guix-latest.tar.gz'...
> >> >guix pull: error: failed to unpack source code
> >> 
> >> What's odd about this, is the actual file
> >> /gnu/store/q4z...-guix-latest.tar.gz, appears to be a valid targz
> >> archive, and I'm able to unpack and repack that using tar manually
> >> just fine. 'realpath $(which tar)' returns
> >> '/gnu/store/ggmmcw327ny831gqd7zvi3hpl5fm23mn-tar-1.28/bin/tar', and
> >> I've done some basic tests which do confirm that binary seems to
> >> work. I'm not having any network problems otherwise.
> >> 
> >> What can I do to further debug / fix this?
> 
> This was caused by a patch I sent which was applied on master.
> Guix error messages could be more natural, as for me the error output I
> got seemed just verbose and I decided it was okay to send this in. The
> commit has since then be reverted and I will send in an updated patch.
> 
> Simpler explanation: a license I added was already inherited by another
> loaded module, this caused some "hick up" and make broke (while it did
> not break locally on my side).

I don't think this is the cause of this bug.

If I remember correctly, Harry mentioned this bug on IRC before the
"expat" problem. Also, this problem appears to happen while unpacking
the tarball, and I _think_ that should be possible independent of bugs
in Guix code.

Since nobody has suggested a more precise debugging method, I recommend
you try running the guix-daemon with `strace -f -o logfile` to see
precisely what fails.