[Nix-dev] Problem installing nix 1.1

[Michael Raskin]

>I'm trying to install nix on a new machine.  It's running Arch so I
>decided to use the generic x86_64 binary distribution.  I ran through
>the steps for using it from a single non-root user account.
>
>rwallace:~$ cd /
>rwallace:/$ sudo tar -jxvf ~/Downloads/nix-1.1-x86_64-linux.tar.bz2
>[sudo] password for rwallace:
>tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
>/usr/bin/nix-finish-install
>/nix/store/reginfo
>/nix/store/043zrsanirjh8nbc5vqpjn93hhrf107f-bash-4.2-p24/
>...
>rwallace:/$ sudo chown -R rwallace /nix
>rwallace:/$ nix-finish-install
>creating /home/rwallace/.nix-profile
>creating /home/rwallace/.nix-defexpr
>installing `nix-1.1'
>error: cannot connect to daemon at
>`/nix/var/nix/daemon-socket/socket': No such file or directory
>/usr/bin/nix-finish-install: unable to install Nix into your default profile
>
>I tried creating the `/nix/var/nix/daemon-socket` directory and that
>didn't help.  What am I missing?

You are aiming at user-owned installation? Unset NIX_REMOTE, which is 
apparently currently equal to "daemon" in your shell. 

Or go the root-owned path (bonus: chroots, which is important if your
/bin/sh is not capable to run full POSIX shell script semantics). Then
you need to actually start the Nix daemon.