Subject: Re: bug#36865: Guix gc breaks grub

From: Ricardo Wurmus <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2019 11:21:04 +0200

Hi Xavier,

> guix gc thinks that grub (and a lot of other stuff that it shouldn't
> think is dead) is dead, as shown by the following commands (given by
> nckx):
>
>
> $ grep unicode /boot/grub/grub.cfg
> search --file --set /gnu/store/0fijjh7qw8ppsks0ba3q9m873ljhj797-grub-2.04/share/grub/unicode.pf2
> if loadfont /gnu/store/0fijjh7qw8ppsks0ba3q9m873ljhj797-grub-2.04/share/grub/unicode.pf2; then
>
> $ guix gc --list-dead | grep 0fijjh7qw8ppsks0ba3q9m873ljhj797
> finding garbage collector roots...
> determining live/dead paths...
> /gnu/store/0fijjh7qw8ppsks0ba3q9m873ljhj797-grub-2.04
>
> I was also able to reproduce the bug by running guix gc and rebooting again.

Oh, that’s not good.  Can you still reproduce this after running “guix
system reconfigure …”?  It should create a new system generation,
register a GC root, and update GRUB.

It should not say that GRUB itself is dead and thus not free it up for
garbage collection.

Could you perhaps share something about how you installed the system (if
it’s anything out of the ordinary)?

--
Ricardo