PantherX has a new official home: codeberg.org/gofranz/panther. The channel introduction commit and signing key are unchanged — only the URL moves. If you were using the old channels.pantherx.org URL, please switch over; that host is being retired.
Along with the move, there’s a new substitute server: substitutes.guix.gofranz.com. It builds against the panther channel, but it’s also useful for plain Guix and Nonguix users — it’s a small build farm running on a ThinkPad in my office. I wrote up how it works (CDN in front of cuirass, why a ThinkPad, the trade-offs) here: A tiny Guix build farm on a ThinkPad.
Channel
Add this to /etc/guix/channels.scm (or ~/.config/guix/channels.scm):
(cons* (channel
(name 'pantherx)
(url "https://codeberg.org/gofranz/panther.git")
;; Enable signature verification
(introduction
(make-channel-introduction
"54b4056ac571611892c743b65f4c47dc298c49da"
(openpgp-fingerprint
"A36A D41E ECC7 A871 1003 5D24 524F EB1A 9D33 C9CB"))))
%default-channels)
Then guix pull. The introduction commit and fingerprint are the same as before, so the chain of trust carries over.
Substitute server
To use substitutes from the new server, authorize its public key:
;; Public key
(public-key
(ecc
(curve Ed25519)
(q #0096373009D945F86C75DFE96FC2D21E2F82BA8264CB69180AA4F9D3C45BAA47#)))
Save that to a file (e.g. /tmp/gofranz.pub) and authorize it:
sudo guix archive --authorize < /tmp/gofranz.pub
Then add the URL to your guix daemon’s substitute URLs. On a Panther OS install this is already wired up via (px system os) — the key and URL are baked into %os-base-services. On a plain Guix system, edit /etc/config.scm and re-add the URL to the guix-configuration, or pass --substitute-urls="https://substitutes.guix.gofranz.com https://ci.guix.gnu.org ..." to guix-daemon.
Why
Two things drove this. Codeberg is a better fit for an authenticated channel than self-hosting on a single VPS — more eyes, longer-term archival, and one less thing for me to babysit. And the new substitute server means panther users don’t have to wait for nonguix to rebuild a kernel before they can install something — there’s a faster mirror right there.
It’s also useful beyond PantherX. If you run plain Guix or Nonguix and want one more substitute mirror in your chain, the key above is all you need.
