Subject: Re: Unable to use /dev/disk/by-id/ symlinks with u-boot and guix system reconfigure

From: Vagrant Cascadian <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 08:14:53 -0700

On 2020-10-23, Mathieu Othacehe wrote:
>> I don't quite understand why that would be the issue here; guix system
>> reconfigure works fine when /dev/mmcblkN is specified target in the
>> system config.scm, just not when the target is /dev/disk/by-id/...
>
> I don't think it works fine with /dev/mmcblkN. I think the bootloader
> configuration file is installed in /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf when
> using /dev/mmcblkN or /dev/disk/, but the bootloader itself is actually
> never installed.

That does not match the behavior I observed; it definitely successfully
installs the bootloader when passing the raw device rather than a
symlink. Which I can only think of a small number of conditions that
would trigger that sort of behavior...

I'm fairly confident in this because I've been experimenting with two
incompatible u-boot bootloaders on the same boot media (one for
pinebook, and one for pinebook pro) and a successful installation
overwrites the bootloader, resulting in the expected machine booting,
and the other machine not booting. With a symlink it doesn't install to
the raw device at all...

That said, I'll move on to testing your next patch. :)

live well,
  vagrant