[Nix-dev] Installing /nix on nfs-mounted volume possible?

[Wout Mertens]

The problem with nfs nix stores is that the metadata is stored in sqlite,
which can't guarantee proper locking on nfs. However, if you only write
from one host, there is no problem.

As for the python stuff, you can run it in a proot, or use nixos which
doesn't have /usr :-)

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016, 6:37 PM Ben Booth <benwbooth at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I would like to use nix to install software and run in on a variety of
> linux machines at my work. I tried installing nix to my NFS-mounted home
> folder as outlined here[1], but I had trouble with both proot[2] and
> nix-user-chroot[3], since they both mess up some permissions and break
> sudo. I should also mention that I really don't want to build packages from
> source if I can avoid it.
>
> The next thing I tried was installing nix to an automounted NFS volume
> mounted at /nix. This seems to work great so far, but now my nix store is
> visible to all users. I don't really mind this, if other users want to run
> my software that's fine. But I've read that for multi-user installations, I
> need to designate a build user and do some other steps for building
> software from source. I haven't tried that yet since I've just been
> downloading packages from the binary cache. Is this something I need to
> worry about?
>
> I've also heard that installing nix on NFS-mounted volumes can cause
> corruption of the nix store because of locking issues. Is this still an
> issue for modern NFSv4 implementations? Our NFS server is running Centos 7
> with a 3.10.0 kernel. Is there some other way to accomplish what I'm trying
> to do that doesn't have these issues?
>
>
> One last question: I installed python into my nix store and would like to
> install some PyPI packages using pip. How can I make sure that, for
> compiled python packages that reference native libraries, that they only
> look in the nix store for native libraries, and not in /usr/lib, etc? I saw
> the `nix-shell` command, but it looks like I would have to add a `-p
> package` argument for each package I want in the environment. Is there any
> way to tell `nix-shell` that I want all my nix packages in the environment?
> I guess I could create a shell script to automate adding a `-p` argument
> for each package in my nix store, but is there an easier way?
>
> Thanks!
> Ben Booth
>
> [1]
> https://nixos.org/wiki/How_to_install_nix_in_home_\(on_another_distribution\)
> [2] http://proot.me/
> [3] https://github.com/lethalman/nix-user-chroot
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-- 

Wout.
(typed on mobile, excuse terseness)
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