Nix is a purely functional package manager. This means that it treats
packages like values in purely functional programming languages such
as Haskell -- they are built by functions that don't have
side-effects, and they never change after they have been built. Nix
stores packages in the Nix store, usually the directory /nix/store,
where each package has its own unique subdirectory such as
/nix/store/b6gvzjyb2pg0kjfwrjmg1vfhh54ad73z-firefox-33.1/
where b6gvzjyb2pg0... is a unique identifier for the package that
captures all its dependencies (it's a cryptographic hash of the
package's build dependency graph).
Nix may be run in single or multi-user mode (which requires the
nix-daemon). The following sets up multi-user mode.
To have the nix daemon start and stop with your host, add to
/etc/rc.d/rc.local:
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.nix ]; then
/etc/rc.d/rc.nix start
fi
and to /etc/rc.d/rc.local_shutdown (creating it if needed):
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.nix ]; then
/etc/rc.d/rc.nix stop
fi
The daemon requires users for building the nix packages, which should
be added under the 'nixbld' group.
# groupadd -g 314 nixbld
# for n in $(seq 1 10); do useradd -c "Nix build user $n" \
# -d /var/empty -g nixbld -G nixbld -M -N -r -s /sbin/nologin \
# nixbld$n; done
Restricting access to the daemon is acheived by setting file
permissions for the daemon's socket's folder.
# groupadd nix-users
# chgrp nix-users /nix/var/nix/daemon-socket
# chmod ug=rwx,o= /nix/var/nix/daemon-socket
Correct permissions must also be set for the following profile
directories to give users access.
# mkdir -p /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user
# chgrp nix-users /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user
# chmod go+wt /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user
# mkdir -p /nix/var/nix/gcroots/per-user
# chgrp nix-users /nix/var/nix/gcroots/per-user
# chmod go+wt /nix/var/nix/gcroots/per-user
To setup a user to use nix, add him to the nix-users group and load
these lines on login (via $HOME/.profile):
export NIX_REMOTE=daemon
source /etc/profile.d/nix.sh
If you have patches email me, or send a pull request via github:
https://github.com/RSKYS/SBo-git/tree/15/nix/system/nix
c7414a536b