Subject: Cannot upgrade GuixSD due to check-device-initrd-modules

From: Adam Van Ymeren <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2018 12:32:18 -0400

My root device is on NVMe.

In my current kernel config CONFIG_NVME_CORE is set to a module, which is
included in my initrd.

However upstream defconfig has been changed to CONFIG_NVME_CORE=y

When trying to guix reconfigure my system, building the operating system
fails in check-device-initrd-modules with the following message

vany/systems.scm:111:10: error: you may need these modules in the initrd for /dev/nvme0n1p2: nvme shpchp
hint: Try adding them to the `initrd-modules' field of your `operating-system' declaration, along these lines:

      (operating-system
        ;; ...
        (initrd-modules (append (list "nvme" "shpchp")
                                %base-initrd-modules)))

If I add initrd-modules to my operating-system, then building the initrd
fails because nvme module cannot be found (as it is not being build as a
module).

Fundamentally I think the problem is that check-device-initrd-modules is
checking modules for the currently running kernel which is not
necessarily the kernel that I will be installing.

At the very least however it would be nice if I could override this
check with a --i-know-what-im-doing flag of some sort.

It seems odd that check-device-initrd-modules will not prevent your
installation from continuing if it can't find modules.alias, but if it
can find it and you didn't specify the initrd-modules it thinks you need
then it becomes a hard error that you can't override.  Perhaps it should
always be a warning or prompt the user if they want to continue.