[Nix-dev] On the sad state of remote-builds for the end-user

[Matthias Beyer]

Hi,

thanks for remembering me on this thread. I didn't get a response on the
question where to document this, though. :-(

Overall, this whole feature (especially remote builds, but also closure
import/export and so on) is not as good documented as it should be.

On 15-06-2016 16:18:18, Brian McKenna wrote:
> Hi Matthias,
> 
> I remember a similar conversation we had a few months ago. If you use
> sudo, you can skip the signature checking:
> 
> https://www.mail-archive.com/nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl/msg18560.html
> 
> It's not ideal - but does this same method get you unstuck?
> 
> On 14 June 2016 at 01:19, Matthias Beyer <mail at beyermatthias.de> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm a bit angry right now because things do not just work.
> >
> > I tried for almost three hours now to build my system on a remote machine.
> > It took 1 hour to build the packages (yesod, yesod-persistent and some more
> > dependencies of yesod and git-annex, see #16210) and then I couldn't download
> > them from the remote machine because of some signatures missing.
> >
> > I tried to use nix-serve, but again... signatures missing. I generated a
> > keypair, did a nix-push to some directory, but then I couldn't download the
> > packages because the private key wasn't in the right path or something like
> > this. This is by the way completely undocumented (the manpage tells you
> > something of a *sysconfdir* ... but leaves unspecified what that is) - only the
> > error message will tell you that it is /etc/nix (which isn't present if you
> > install nix on a non-nixos system... leading to more confusion). After putting
> > the private key into this path it starts complaining about the rights of the
> > file (either a "everyone is able to read this and that shouldn't be the
> > case"-like error message or some "Cannot read key" because there are too few
> > rights...) ... and again: completely undocumented what rights are sufficient
> > (this time not even the error message tells you what rights are to be expected).
> >
> > Can someone please provide a tutorial on how to build packages or a whole system
> > on another machine? I do not want to mess around with keys and such ... I just
> > want to build my system/package on that other machine... I have access via SSH
> > (key) and that's it.
> >
> > I really don't want to rebuild all this haskell stuff every two weeks on my
> > notebook... I still wonder why it isn't available as binary substitute...
> > someone on IRC pointed out that there were changes in the haskell
> > infrastructure... I don't understand why that means that substitutes are no
> > longer available (and I really do not want to have to understand it... I just
> > want to _use_ it).
> >
> > Please don't feel offended by this mail. I'm just really frustrated right now.
> >
> > --
> > Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
> > Kind regards,
> > Matthias Beyer
> >
> > Proudly sent with mutt.
> > Happily signed with gnupg.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > nix-dev mailing list
> > nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
> > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
> >

-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Kind regards,
Matthias Beyer

Proudly sent with mutt.
Happily signed with gnupg.
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