nix profile [verb] failing on MacOS 14 with permission error

[n8henrie]

Describe the bug

I have nix installed on my wife's laptop so I can do maintenance tasks. I don't feel like setting up nix-darwin since I only use these occasionally and want the rest of the system to work as usual.

A few utilities I had pinned can no longer be upgraded, removed, and nothing new can be installed, all with permissions errors:

Steps To Reproduce

$ nix profile remove 1
removing 'flake:nixpkgs#legacyPackages.aarch64-darwin.jq'
error: creating symlink from '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/username/profile-7-link.tmp-22749-874578672' to '/nix/store/95zdhdn0198wr1f8pdzwb1l6sq5vygca-profile': Permission denied
$
$ ls -ld /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/username/
drwxr-xr-x 9 root nixbld 288 Jan 10  2023 /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/username/
$ ls -l /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/username/
total 0
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root nixbld 14 Jan 10  2023 profile -> profile-6-link
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root nixbld 51 Jan 10  2023 profile-1-link -> /nix/store/v8nfk141v59vbxgz9y74m9vrvsy0x0bm-profile
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root nixbld 51 Jan 10  2023 profile-2-link -> /nix/store/93a6qsws35i3x9zrc1rg2ckpp18sq13f-profile
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root nixbld 51 Jan 10  2023 profile-3-link -> /nix/store/wpjagz66frwf8f8fmiq51j5lv4db0yml-profile
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root nixbld 51 Jan 10  2023 profile-4-link -> /nix/store/gmvfx1k21x9h8i0hlc88j9zyyvnbc0fx-profile
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root nixbld 51 Jan 10  2023 profile-5-link -> /nix/store/mk683q0wpvb32vzffppq6gcyrm2784b6-profile
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root nixbld 51 Jan 10  2023 profile-6-link -> /nix/store/4iaqcdmpi5q34zlqg57ma17n0g97mssq-profile

Expected behavior

Can install / remove / upgrade pinned packages.

nix-env --version output

$ nix-env --version
nix-env (Nix) 2.19.2

Additional context

I might have had to reinstall nix a few months ago because it wasn't working after an OS upgrade? Can't remember.

Tried adding username to trusted-users and relaunching nix-daemon, didn't change anything.

Priorities

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[n8henrie]

On my machine, permissions for /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/$user are $user:wheel instead of root:nixbld.

Should I just chmod these? Or perhaps there is a nix way to verify / fix permissions? Or maybe just reinstall again?

EDIT: Or maybe my machine is the one that's wrong, it's a much older install!

[yannham]

FYI, I had the same issue on Debian (after nix couldn't be found in path anymore, I reinstalled it although my store and all config files were still around, and got this issue afterward - or maybe this was the original issue causing nix to not be in the path in the first place? anyway). chown-ing /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/$user seems to have fixed the error for the time being.

[n8henrie]

I just reinstalled and now /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/$USER doesn't exist at all.

[n8henrie]

Just tried sudo rm -r /nix/var/ and then reinstalling and I still have no user directory:

$ ls -A /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user
root

[n8henrie]

Reinstalled again, this time removing /nix/var/* and ~/.nix-*. Looks like there's an error during the installation that I probably missed:

~~> Setting up the nix-daemon LaunchDaemon
Load failed: 5: Input/output error
Try running `launchctl bootstrap` as root for richer errors.
Alright! We're done!
Try it! Open a new terminal, and type:

Seems to be coming from

nix/scripts/install-darwin-multi-user.sh

Line 103 in 75ebb90

task "Setting up the nix-daemon LaunchDaemon"

Looks like this should be the missing step:

$ NIX_DAEMON_DEST=/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.nix-daemon.plist
$ sudo /usr/bin/install -m -rw-r--r-- "/nix/var/nix/profiles/default$NIX_DAEMON_DEST" "$NIX_DAEMON_DEST"
$ sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.nix-daemon.plist
$ sudo launchctl kickstart -k system/org.nixos.nix-daemon

I get an error at:

$ sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.nix-daemon.plist
Load failed: 5: Input/output error
Try running `launchctl bootstrap` as root for richer errors.

Probably should be using bootstrap instead of load here, I guess (as bootstrap is used elsewhere and we're using the non-legacy kickstart just below that).

$ sudo launchctl bootstrap system /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.nix-daemon.plist
Bootstrap failed: 5: Input/output error

Ok, probably due to the prior installation.

$ sudo launchctl bootout system/org.nixos.nix-daemon
$ sudo launchctl bootout system/org.nixos.nix-daemon
Boot-out failed: 3: No such process

Yup, failed the second time, so I assume that's it.

$ sudo launchctl bootstrap system /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.nix-daemon.plist
$ echo $?
0

Good deal.

$ sudo launchctl kickstart -k system/org.nixos.nix-daemon

But still no user profile...

$ ls /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/
root

[n8henrie]

Followed uninstall instructions from https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/installation/uninstall.html#macos and tried to reinstall again.

Got an error about ~/.local/state/nix/ -- removed that, repeated the uninstall instructions, repeated install...

$ ls /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/
root

Interestingly, according to https://nixos.wiki/wiki/User_Environment

~/.nix-profile is a symbolic link to the current user environment (an automatically generated package consisting of symlinks to installed packages).

❯ ls -l ~/.nix-profile
lrwxrwxrwx ... /home/username/.nix-profile -> /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/username/profile

But for me:

$ ls -l ~/.nix-profile
lrwxr-xr-x  1 username  staff  50 Jan 30 17:09 /Users/username/.nix-profile -> /Users/username/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile

[n8henrie]

Related? #7984

Well my initial attempt to install home-manager failed due to this directory not existing, but this one succeeded even without the /nix/var/nix/profiles directory existing. So perhaps it's unnecessary. Oh well.

[thufschmitt]

@n8henrie The wiki page is outdated it seems. /nix/var/nix/profiles/$USER doesn't exist any more on fresh installs and is replaced by ~/.local/state/nix/profiles