Subject: bug#47717: guix outrageously exhaust itself (freeze) when there is package build failure

From: Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2021 20:41:00 +0200

Hi bo0od,

Your subject was quite dramatic and probably not true.  Try to 
avoid both.

bo0od writes:
> The real issue it caused guix to freeze for like not less than 
> 2+
> hours and i couldnt do anything with the distro until guix cut 
> out
> the build/upgradation by itself.

Take a look at (and next time, attach)

  $ bzless 
  /var/log/guix/drvs/5a/8xxi15g20iqr78daw3w1c7xyqmmd1k-vigra-1.11.1.drv.bz2

the log file mentioned in the error message.  You'll probably find 
the string ‘Killed’ near the end.  If you haven't rebooted yet,

  $ grep oom /proc/vmstat

will probably return something non-zero.

If so: you ran out of memory while building a heavy package.  This 
causes your system to become unresponsive whilst it tries to 
postpone that for as long as possible.  This is a fact of Linux.

You can try to work around it by adding RAM, passing ‘-{M,c}1’ to 
the guix command that failed, and/or enabling swap, but the root 
cause is you simply don't have enough memory to build this package 
at its default settings.

Or, you can make sure you download a substitute instead of trying 
to build everything locally.  At the time of writing (commit 
d14f213) there's a libreoffice substitute on ci.guix.gnu.org.  Are 
substitutes configured and enabled?

Kind regards,

T G-R