Episode: 3448
Title: HPR3448: Installing GuixSD
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3448/hpr3448.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 23:39:22

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3448 for Wednesday, the 20th of October 2021.
The show is entitled, Installing Gix. It is hosted by Roen and is about 45 minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summary is Roen Records Installing Gix to an external USB drive
to be run on a Mac Mini computer. This episode of HBR is brought to you by
An Honest Host.com. Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15.
That's HBR15. Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honest Host.com.
Welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today I am going to try to once again install the Gix SD onto my Mac Mini.
Actually, I'll be using the Mac Mini as the CPU and stuff, but I have an external hard drive,
USB hard drive, C gate that I will be actually using for the hard drive, and this will be a backup
device, hopefully. It may also end up being a little bit of a media server. We'll see
using my TV as the screen currently. So far, this is my second attempt. I actually, well,
theoretically got it installed, but I decided to use the loops, like full disk encryption,
and when I actually booted and tried to put in my password for the encrypted volume,
I just kept getting errors and getting thrown into the grub rescues prompt. So I am now trying
this again, going to just reinstall without that, and we'll worry about encryption later.
So once it boots up and you can be installed, it comes to a nice, if you know, very, if you're
first introduction to some of the nice installers of the early 90s, well, I guess not early 90s,
mid to late 90s. You'll be very familiar with this, kind of reminds me of my old Debian installation.
You get a nice, I guess it's a Windows-based, but like, you know, in cursor style, kind of
cursor style menu selection. So right now, I'm on the, I'm on the selector language,
which for me is the default to English. So I'm going to pick English, and I scroll down to America.
It enter time zone, let's see, I've got a whole bunch there, an alphabetical order.
So I will look for New York, that puts in the right one for me, New York.
Now I can pick the keyboard layout, which I will just be using the English US, but they do have
bunches. I think you'll be able to find the keyboard layout and language and time zone
that you are currently using and living in. Please choose a variant to be a keyboard,
please enter a system hostname. What was I going to call this? I guess I had something
related, but I can't remember what I was going to call it. I guess I'll try backup.
I'll be AFK, UP. Uh, I have to try to do.
Hostname. Okay, all right. No Ethernet service available. Please try again. Why?
I should be hardwired. I don't think the drive geach is going to have the drivers for the Wi-Fi
for a Mac mini. Not sure why. What is going on? I'm here. All the connections are there.
Let's try again. I have to enter. Waiting for internet. Okay, I must have just had the cable
doesn't the clip. Now wait, it's like a network to not provide access to the internet.
Please try what is going on. I see. Waiting for internet access establishment.
All right, I don't know what's going on. Please choose what is following.
Why do I not have an internet?
That is the
Ethernet cell.
The app is like a cable.
Whoops.
No, we just put down.
I don't know what is going on.
This makes for exciting radio and podcasting, do I not have a light coming on, what's going
on?
No, I'm not sure what was going on with the cables, but I had a couple of pushing the
minute out and finally connected, I probably should get a better cable.
But turning on, let's see, substitute server discovery.
If I turn this option on, you allow geeks to fetch substitutes, pre-build boundary,
stirring installation from server still discovered on your local area network,
in addition to the official server, this can increase download through it.
There are no security risks, only genuine substitutes sure I'll enable it,
although there's nothing going to be on my network.
Please choose the password for the system administrator.
Okay.
I did actually already have this selected, so I will edit out the boring parts once I actually get these typed in.
Okay, so first they do require a root password, which I put in that is nice,
they do let you select a box so you can see it.
One of the things I ran into with the Mac Mini was, of course, they have a Bluetooth keyboard
and mouse, which, of course, geeks doesn't recognize.
So I went and I bought a handy dandy little RII Mini X1 mini keyboard.
It's like, I guess, the size of a full size room TV remote.
But it has, it's a query keyboard, it's got a trackpad on it, it's got like a little mouse's buttons
for a left and right mouse clear, can everything.
But the advantage to it is you can use it either as a USB directly or it actually has a USB Bluetooth connection.
So I'll see plug the USB, you know, dongle into the back of the Mac Mini and then you can use for a keyboard remotely, which is nice.
And it's nice and small, so I can tuck it away under the TV with the Mac Mini.
But anyway, so I was able to, using the keyboard verified the passwords and they do make you verify it.
Now I have to add a regular user and do the password thing.
So I will be right back after I put a standard user and the standard user password in.
Okay, after adding my standard user, I'm now at a new screen that lets you pick the desktop environment.
I do have several here, known XFCE, Montey, Enlightenment, Openbox, awesome I3, Rat poison, E-Max, EX, WM.
I think I'm going to go with XFCE just because I'm trying to minimize the requirements, because I don't know, like, it's the drivers for the,
graphics chip on the Mac Mini, I'm not sure what, you know, how much of the graphics driver I'm going to be able to use.
And I do like the look of XFCE and it does run nice on, you know, either restricted environment, you know, devices or devices with that aren't, you know, cranking out things on the GPU.
So let's go with that.
All right, now, you can now select networking services running your system.
I do have choices for open SSH, tour, and a default with Mozilla NFS certificate for HTTPSX.
I'll leave that and I'll probably, in I'll add an SSH server.
Well, somehow, how do I go back?
Well, I have had the SSH server, I got confused and I thought I was selecting the server, but somehow went to the next screen, which is partitioning.
I'm just going to pick guided using the entire disk. Last time I did guided using the entire disk with encryption, but that's where I ran into issues.
So I'm just going to pick guided using the entire disk this time and get things working. Hopefully.
And I don't see my disk. External disk.
Oh, I don't see my external disk.
I thought it was still plugged in.
Because it got, I see the original Apple 500 gigabyte, which I don't want to do anything with.
I see my Sandisk Ultra 30 gigabit.
That's because, and that's what the installer's on.
Okay, well, nothing simple.
I don't know why, unless for some reason, I don't know why I didn't see the other disk.
All right, well, let me stick that external on my laptop and see what's going on.
And then see if I can get this thing working again. I'll be back.
Okay, so I stuck the external drive on my laptop and it popped up and asked me for the encrypted password, and I put it in, and then I could see all the installed files from before.
So yeah, so that is an issue with the installer or maybe whatever is accepting the password when I type it in.
So whatever reason it would not like and grub unencrypt the hard drive and then continue the boot process.
So I did just reformatted the external drive to EXT4, and I've rebooted, and now I will go through all the steps of that includes putting in the password.
That's fun on this keyboard, but anyway, I will be back once I get up to the format the hard drive side, and we'll see how things are.
Okay, so I'm now back, actually, at the point where I can select a interface, hopefully I can do that right this time.
Yes, okay, now I'm going to get an interface as a desktop, so I've now selected XFCE.
Okay, let me see if I can get open SSH installed.
Okay.
All right, now I'm guided using the entire disk, and let's see if the disk shows up.
What is going on? Why is it not...
I don't understand.
That's not...
I'm not working yet. I really don't want to do this again.
All right, well, I guess hopefully third time will be a charm. I'm going to not format it, but just completely erase this disk.
What's going on? No, it's not. I know it was definitely found before, so I don't know why it doesn't like it this time around.
It's very frustrating, but let's try again.
Okay, so I threw the external drive back onto my laptop, and I used it parted to just wipe both the boot partition and the main partitions.
So there was just an empty drive with no partitions. I then stuck it back in the Mac Mini, and I basically can exit out, and it gets to a point where it then lets you read...
It gives you options to read where you want to start on the installation again, and I went back to partitioning, and when it came back, it had, I guess, recognized my Cgate backup drive.
So now I see it, and I will be able to install onto it. So I'm very happy. I didn't have to do the three with the whole process again, particularly putting in a password multiple times for the regular user.
So let's open this, my laptop, and not the key right keyboard. Let's go down to Cgate, or 800, and two gigabytes. I said, 8-terabyte drive. Exit, nope, enter.
Okay, everything is in one partition separate, so I wasn't sure about before. Do I want a separate home? And I got a pen, so I'm going to do everything as well.
Cgate, that 32-boot, and a small, sure, that looks great.
So this part is asking you what you want your divisions to be. So I've got, there'll be three partitions. First will be a 576 megabyte, that 32 for the boot partition.
The second is the Linux swap, it looks like it's a four gig, and then almost eight terabytes, terabytes, yes, of EXT4 single root partition.
Okay, well, now you get the format disk. We are about to write the configuration, table to disk, and format the partition as well, so below, the data will be lost, you wish to continue, continue. Partition formatted is in progress, please wait.
Okay, I guess I can pause again, although I guess I could just let it go until I don't think it took that long. Oh, it didn't. Okay, we're back.
All right, so now we are now ready to proceed with the installation. A system configuration file has been generated. It is displayed below. This file will be available as Etsyconfig.sem on the install system.
The new system will be created from this file once you press, once you've pressed, okay, this will take a few minutes. So with Geeks, everything basically comes down to a configuration file.
So this is the main configuration file for this, it will be used for this system. So the configuration file contains basically a list of everything you selected.
You have, you serve modules desktop, networking, SSH, Xorg, and then under the operating system, the locale is in us.utf8, time zone, American New York, keyboard layout, keyboard layout, US.
I have first name backup, user, just a user account, name, rowing, comment, rowing as in my first name, full name,
group, standard default abusers, home directory, home rowing, supplementary groups that are defaulted in our wheel and that dev audio video.
And then there's a, it looks like a variable for base user accounts. I'm not sure what all this means.
And then there's a packages, it's a pinned, and then list specification points to packages, NSS bash certs.
And then we have services, append, list, service, XFC desktop service type. We have service, open SSH service type, set org configuration, Xorg configuration, keyboard layout, keyboard layout.
I guess that was setting up the actual packages from the modules that were imported off before.
And then we have bootloader, bootloader, configuration, bootloader, grow, VF bootloader, and then target, slash boot, slash EFI, and then keyboard layout, keyboard layout.
And I think that pretty much, scroll down on the screen a little bit.
Well, okay, it keeps going.
Not too far.
Okay, then we have swap devices, then file systems, mount point, which is for the boot EFI.
That's for the boot partition, and then file system, mount point for root.
And it gives us the device and the file system type.
And that seems to cover the configuration file.
Yep, all right. So now let's go on to the next screen.
Oops, I did not want to edit.
Apparently nano is the default editor.
Let me see if I can control that things.
Wait, is that control? Yeah, I've mentioned before.
X, scroll, X.
Oops, press Enter to continue.
Okay, now let's see if I can get to the right tab, okay.
Enter, okay.
All right, so now we're back to sort of like not the shell.
We're like a standard out or something.
And now we're getting Shepard Service Direct Steam and it started.
Substitute updating substitutes.
That's basically scrolling down. It seems like the system is starting up.
Oh no, it looks like download.
Okay, so I guess they're actually updating the system and downloading newer packages to be installed.
It's what it looks like.
I'm guessing this might take a little bit of time.
So I will be back once it's done updating.
Okay, so that was a bigger pause than I figured is now like September 11th.
So August 31st was the last time I got back to this project.
Excuse me, I had just left the Mac mini running.
Apparently we have a power flicker at some point and it went off.
So now I'm going to see if I can get back to a state after playing around.
I do see the boot disk on my USB stick again.
I have to say the Mac mini, at least this model, to get to the select a different disk option for booting.
All you have to do is hold down the Alt key on your keyboard as a boot's up.
It is so nice and it just pops up a nice graphical, you know, the Macintosh.
What are they, or the Mac, however it's called?
Icons and it's called EFE Boot, EFI booting.
And then you just have to select it with your arrow keys and then hit Enter.
And it boots and now I'm back to the grub.
You know, it's going to start up.
So I'm assuming I'm going to, I'm hoping it's going to find the disk.
Again, it's still booting up back into the installer.
Well, then again, no, I'm getting some kind of air.
Wow, no, it's still booting.
Something's booting, I'm not sure.
So we'll see if I can get back to where I was or if I'm going to have to start this process.
I'll over again.
I now have a blank screen.
Oh, no, no.
Oh, there we are.
Okay, so now we're back at the very beginning.
So now let me see if I can pick figure proxy.
Oh, well, it looks like I may be going through the whole, yeah, the whole install process again.
That's painful, but not too painful.
Anyway, let me flip through some of these things and see if I can get back to that configure page
for the install configure that geeks the uses for the system.
And then I'll continue.
All right, so I did have to go through the whole reinstall process again,
which I meant putting in root and new user password again.
But anyway, I think that back to the point where I was going to repartition the disk
and it wasn't showing the C gate external drive wasn't showing up again.
So you can at this point where it's asking you to select a disk, go to exit.
That will take you back to the screen that lets you decide where you want to restart your installation from.
So it has the different sections like pick a keyboard and add users and all that stuff.
So if you then I unplugged the USB drive and plugged it back in,
and then I went back to partitioning and it is now showing up again.
I'm not sure why it didn't show up on boot other than I guess because the install wasn't completed.
I'm not really sure.
But anyway, so now I am back to the point where I can do the formatting with this.
So I'll run through all that stuff, do the install, and then I'll take back up after that point.
Okay, so now we look like I just finished installing again.
Geek system boot letter successfully installed on slash boot slash EFI.
Press Enter to continue.
So let's see, let's hit Enter.
Some demons are stopping.
Some demons are starting.
The Geek stash demon to be precise, or demon.
And now I'm sitting and waiting to see what's happening.
I can't hear the hard disk clicking away.
And so one thing I noticed when it was installing, I mean it's not super loud,
but it is noticeable in a quiet room.
But I think I can live with that.
Hopefully everybody else will be able to also.
All right, still waiting to see what's going to happen.
I think we went through this before.
It's been so long, I can't remember.
I guess I will hit pause and come back when I get to another screen.
Okay, after about another 30 seconds or so, I now have installation complete.
Congratulations, installation is now complete.
You may remove the device containing the installation image.
And press the button to reboot.
So we remove that one drive.
And then the moment of magic, let's hit Enter.
All right, it looks like it's shutting down.
And it is rebooting.
The magical Mac sound for rebooting and right here is the disk drive.
And we're at Grab Rescue.
Something tells me that maybe it's not the encryption disk.
Maybe it just can't find the boot disk because it maybe doesn't have drivers to load the USB external at this point.
Ah, that is very unhandy.
I keep hearing it thinking away though.
I'm not sure what's going to have to read right outside of this gear.
Grab Rescue.
So it does boot to grab.
That means it feels like it's...
Yeah, okay.
Maybe I should set my output for failure.
Let me type LS on the group web.
Grab Rescue.
Enter.
I see...
Two disks and HD zero and an HD one.
And make me think that's the hard disk.
Because it has two partitions on it.
Make sure those have GPT-321.
So they each have three partitions on them.
I know if I...
All right.
Let me reboot a...
That's frustrating.
Let's see.
Boot and hit halt.
Just make sure it's actually seeing the external drive.
I mean, I'm assuming it is because it's got to grow up.
Don't know why it's not then.
Come on.
Now, well, that's annoying.
So it's not...
This external drive is not showing up...
It's like an EFE drive.
I just see the Macintosh HD in the recovery for 10.13.6.
So maybe...
I guess maybe grove got installed to the main HD.
Which I guess would make sense.
And this disk isn't being recognized at boot.
I don't know if there's something else I have to do.
I guess one way around it would be to have like a small USB disk that then boots.
All right, well...
I don't know if that's the symbol for...
Or the sign that I need to give up in this particular configuration and maybe just back up the Macintosh Hard drive.
Or partitions.
I don't think it's T0.
I'm going to be playing around a little bit if I find something.
Well, let's see what happens when we hit enter on the Macintosh HD.
I hope I'm booting into Apple just like it says.
All right.
That was painful.
All right, I guess I can...
Once I've booted into the Mac, I can get in and see what the Hard disk selector says.
Maybe I can reboot.
Let me pause for a bit.
Once this is booting up, let me get to that and we'll come back.
Well, I mean, the Mac booted.
Of course, I looked at the start-up disk.
Well, why I thought I didn't check the...
I guess I was stupid, but it's the HD4, so it's not going to recognize it anyway.
So anyway, I just shut down the Mac and then pulled the external disk.
The USB connection off the Mac mini and put it on my laptop.
And of course, it just shows right up in the file viewer.
You know, connected to the USB-A terabyte volume.
3.6 gigabytes used.
If I look at the root of it, it's got like, you know, a bin, a boot directory.
The GNU, which I'm assuming is the store for geeks.
Yep.
I mean, yep.
So it's installed correctly.
So my guess is actually the first time I did this, it probably installed correctly.
Fantastic.
I may have even tested that.
Oh, that's painful.
Oh, yeah, I did test that.
I was thinking that it wasn't loading.
Being cryptid dang correctly.
So for whatever reason when the Mac is booting, it's not seen as a...
a viable disk.
So I'm not sure why.
So I have to look into that.
And hopefully not reinstall this.
Just figure out some way to modify the disk to say it.
I'm going to look at this and part it and see what part it gives me.
Okay.
So I actually did a DF on it at first.
And you know, it is showing up as flash dev, flash FTC3.
I do have other two other hard drives for my laptop.
So that makes sense.
I unmounted it.
And I'm now looking at just the dev directory.
And I see, you know, stsda, stsda, stb.
I say the stc driver with the three partitions.
Three devices, stc1, stc2, stc3.
So let me run parted on the SDC.
Okay.
I'm waiting for sudo.
There we go.
It's alright.
I think it's print.
Let's add this using the fcc sometimes print.
So I have three partitions.
Just like I said, a 576 megabyte fat32 boot.
That has a boot flag on it.
So I have four gigabyte Linux swap.
And then the main partition, which is almost eight terabytes.
So I don't have to look into this a little bit more.
I mean, it looks like it's set up right.
It's got a boot flag.
It's a fat32.
It should be recognizable.
So I'm not sure if there's something...
Well, it's not being recognized that boot up.
Alright, let me look into this and I'll see if I can figure something out.
So I'll boot it back into the Mac just to see what it's seeing.
It is showing the external disk, but it's only showing the Linux swap one.
I mean, it's saying it doesn't know anything about it other than its size.
But it's not showing any of the other two partitions on it.
And I don't know why it wouldn't at least show the first one because it's a boot.
You know, it's a fat32 partition.
I mean, I think it'll be able to at least see that.
But anyway, let me do a little more research and see if I can figure something else out.
Although I have the feeling there is going to be another re-installation in my picture.
Okay, so if I'm looking at the dev directory on the Mac,
I do see a disk zero and a disk one, just the zero.
I'm assuming it's the Mac one.
This one seems to be according to, you know, what I found in the disk utility
as in fine-seeing the swap for whatever reason, disk one is two.
And I do see a disk one, a disk one is one, a disk one is two, and a disk one is three.
Okay, so that gives me some hope.
Let me see if I can actually somehow mount disk one, s one, and see what's on it.
Okay, I guess Google's searching is your friend.
And apple.stackyshange.com is also your friend.
I didn't even think about the fact that there's the command line disk util on the Mac.
So disk util space list.
And that does show up both disks, and it's, you know, actually very nice all the information.
It's dev disk one external physical, you know, giving me information, you know,
the GUID partition scheme under the type size eight terabytes disk one.
So that's, you know, pretty much guarantees that's the right disk.
And I can see for partition one, it says EFI, no name.
And it's 575.7 megabytes.
Part two Linux file, Part three Linux file system.
Okay, so maybe that is the second disk when I do that.
Desk three partition.
So let me try that again.
And maybe we are down to meeting to get some kind of driver.
I don't know.
Let me see.
It's also starting to get noisy in the house as the morning is on.
So maybe harder to record.
Okay.
Well, it has been another month since I last worked on this project.
I ran into some issues with my operating system on my laptop and had to reinstall another story
for hopefully a very short, another time on hack or public radio.
But anyway, I come to conclusion at this point, this is just beyond my current technical skills.
If it is possible to set up a Mac mini running geeks off of an external USB hard drive.
I think I am just going to make an image of the Mac mini hard drives
so that I can restore it with the Mac operating system at some point in the future if I need to or want to.
And I am then just going to see if I can get geeks installed directly onto the Mac mini drive
and see if that solves my installation issues.
But thank you for your persistence and patience up to this point.
I am not going to avail you of that story yet.
I will try to wrap this up now.
So I think overall, I like the geeks installer.
Yes, it is a little old school and it is looks, but it flows nicely.
It gives you good options for all your various languages, keyboard setups, options for installing software.
It walks you through nicely, explains things nicely of what it is doing on each step.
And you can get back and go through different steps with an install process if you need to.
So overall, I think it is a great installer looking forward to actually getting it installed on a machine that I am going to use.
Hopefully on a regular basis, I do currently have geeks installed on a VM and have messed with it a little bit, but not too much.
And so with that, I will say thank you and please stay tuned for more adventures with Hacker Public Radio.
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