Subject: Re: bug#24943: Error when starting a vm-image in qemu

From: [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès)
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2016 18:48:44 +0100

[email-masked] skribis:

> I thought I had included that info, but yes that does work. Part of the reason
> for filing the bugreport was so that this case could be handled more elegantly
> instead of bugging out and dropping a user in the REPL. Unless one is a dev, the
> REPL might as well be a kernel panic, only without the (potentially) useful
> timeout.
>
> I'd personally prefer it if the image generated by vm-image could either
>
> A) Spit out an error that there isn't a networking device found and shutdown
> (not a fan, but if there is a reason vm-image /has/ to have a working network
> connection, this would likely be better. Including a chance to hit a key to drop
> a dev/advanced user into the REPL would be nice as well) or
> B) Spit out an error and finish the booting process, with guix complaining about
> no network connection any time it's needing to download something (easily the
> better option).

Yes, that makes sense.

On closer inspection, that feature (setting up QEMU guest networking
directly from the initrd) is something we need in only 1 situation,
which is ‘expression->derivation-in-linux-vm’, so commit
6129dd8b5989f77b2976c68ecdf1f7dbfa63ec46 removed that feature for images
produced by ‘guix system vm’ and ‘guix system vm-image’.

So now you should no longer have this problem when networking is
missing.

Thank you,
Ludo’.