Install Guix

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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: January 21st, 2025

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  • I missed this part during my first read:

    This screen allows you to customise which fields are displayed in the currently selected window. Use cursor keys (or Alt + j and k) to move up and down this list, d to toggle whether a field is displayed and s to choose the field by which the window is sorted.

    and when I tried it, it seemed like my commands weren’t doing anything… so in case anyone else finds this helpful…

    How to sort columns in top.

    • Launch top
    • Press f (not SHIFT+F)
    • Use arrow keys or alt+j / alt+k to select a column
    • Press s to sort by the column you’ve currently selected
      • note: you won’t get any obvious feedback, this is normal… I guess
      • look at the top line: whose current sort field is $COLUMN_NAME
      • this line will change when you press s
    • Press q to exit the Fields Management screen
    • Selected column should now be sorted from largest to smallest

    At this point, top may not look like it sorted the selected column. It may be helpful to tell top to highlight the currently sorted column. Press x to do this.

    Now it should be easier to tell which column was sorted.


  • Wait… what?

    $ top --version
    top from procps-ng 4.0.5-dirty
    

    The following utilities are provided by procps:

    • free - Report the amounts of free and used memory in the system
    • hugetop - Report hugepage usage of processes and the system as a whole
    • kill - Send a signal to a process based on PID
    • pgrep - List processes based on name or other attributes
    • pkill - Send a signal to a process based on name or other attributes
    • pmap - Report the memory map of a process
    • ps - Report process information including PID and resource usage
    • pwdx - Report the current working directory of a process
    • skill - Obsolete version of pgrep/pkill
    • slabtop - Display kernel slab cache information in real time
    • snice - Renice a process
    • sysctl - Read or write kernel parameters at run-time
    • tload - Graphical representation of system load average
    • top - Dynamic real-time view of running processes
    • uptime - Display how long the system has been running
    • vmstat - Report virtual memory statistics
    • w - Report logged in users and what they are doing
    • watch - Execute a program periodically, showing output fullscreen

    https://gitlab.com/procps-ng/procps

    Oh, so these guys manage top and a few other common utilities.






  • On Guix, I could bisect (like git bisecting) my OS. So usually what would happen is:

    • I’m running in a good state
    • I accidentally mess something up
    • oh no
    • guix system switch-generation $n, where n is the last known good state
    • then binary search until I find the first bad generation
    • look at the config changes I made
    • fix them
    • back to good state

    Unfortunately, my laptop is too new so Guix isn’t fully compatible with all my hardware. (Yes, I was using nonguix)

    But that was a pretty neat experience compared to debugging something on Arch.






  • Ah, nice ok. Your post got me to look at dropbear a little more closely, but since I got a bunch of disks, I think USB unlock makes more sense in my setup. I’m using a keyfile on the USB to unlock a bunch of disks on boot. But if I only had one, then dropbear would be more doable for me.

    Neat! Interesting post!





  • Same boat. I’m currently testing some unlock stuff out. I just got USB unlocks to work for Debian by following this: https://tqdev.com/2022-luks-with-usb-unlock

    I load a USB with a keyfile, then read the keyfile during boot. If I don’t have the USB plugged in, I fallback to entering a passphrase. I have multiple LUKS encrypted disks and I don’t want to type out a long passphrase a bunch of times.

    I briefly encountered dropbear during my research… but ended up following the USB path because it kinda seemed a little easier to setup. 🤷

    Anyone have any thoughts on USB vs dropbear unlocks?