Hi,

Since we want to understand the limitations of GNU Boot, we need to document what kenrels shipped by FSDG distros it is compatible with.

With an X200 with a broken Ethernet card (replaced by a builtin USB card with some hardware modifications) I can boot GNU HURD made with Guix.

I've made an image with the following configuration that I had to test Hurd VMs:

;;; Copyright © Guix documentation authors
;;; Copyright © 2022 Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org>
;;;
;;; This file is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
;;; under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
;;; the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at
;;; your option) any later version.
;;;
;;; This file is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
;;; WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
;;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
;;; GNU General Public License for more details.
;;;
;;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
;;; along with GNU Guix.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

(use-modules (gnu)
             (gnu machine)
             (gnu machine ssh))
(list (machine
       (operating-system
        (@ (hurd-vm-system) hurd-vm-operating-system))
       (environment managed-host-environment-type)
       (configuration
        (machine-ssh-configuration
         (authorize? #t)
         (build-locally? #f)
         (host-key
          (string-append
           "ssh-ed25519"
           " "
           "<the SSH key>"))
         (host-name "<some IP addresss>")
         (identity "./id_ed25519")
         (port 222)
         (system "i586-gnu")
         (user "root")))))

The image was generated with:

guix system image \
        --save-provenance \
        --image-type=hurd-raw \
        --image-size=4G hurd-vm-system.scm

This was then copied to a hard disk with ddrescue (ddrescue ./the-image.img /dev/sdN -f) and then to boot Hurd you need:

• A ThinkPad X200 with a broken Ethernet or probably to disable the Ethernet somehow in the Ethernet partition of the boot flash.
• A GNU Boot image that is in low resolution (either GRUB or SeaBIOS)

You then need to edit the grub menu and replace hd0 by sd0 and it will boot the first time. It won't boot a second time due to some Guix issue.

High resolution GRUB images don't work at all: you are stuck in GRUB and you don't see anything after that (maybe Hurd boots but we can't see it).

I've not tested yet High resolution SeaBIOS yet.

See also the bug https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?66307 for potential fixes upstream.