[Nix-dev] 3 strange busybox problems

[Michael Bock]

Hi nix folks,

I'm having some strange troubles on my NixOS machine. It looks that's
somehow related to the busybox package, here are some cases:

1. It's not possible to see manpages for any program anymore.

``

man grep
man: no manual entry for 'grep'

man -aw
BusyBox v1.24.2 () multi-call binary.

Usage: man [-aw] [MANPAGE]...

Format and display manual page

    -a    Display all pages
    -w    Show page locations

``

This appeared some time ago and is the case throughout any rollback.


2. The top command

``

top

[...]

*** buffer overflow detected ***: top terminated
[...]

00400000-004f8000 r-xp 00000000 fe:01 411845                            
/nix/store/gkm15nx2gw43qasbkijs3czzhq6hwk86-busybox-1.24.2/bin/busybox
[...]

7febfa18d000-7febfa1a3000 r-xp 00000000 fe:01 695683                    
/nix/store/q3wx1gab2ysnk5nyvyyg56ana2v4r2ar-glibc-2.24/lib/libgcc_s.so.1
[...]

``

See the full output here: https://pastebin.com/ssUCziP7

This appeared earlier than the first issue and is also now the case in
any older rollback.


3. Tor-Browser (happens with some other programs as well..)

``

tor-browser
cp: invalid option -- 'u'
BusyBox v1.24.2 () multi-call binary.

Usage: cp [OPTIONS] SOURCE... DEST

Copy SOURCE(s) to DEST

    -a    Same as -dpR
    -R,-r    Recurse
[...]

``

This however, disappears when rolling back.


All of them seem to be busybox related. For example the procps top works
fine:

``

nix-shell -p procps

top ...

``


Does anyone have suggestion here? It's actually the first time something
'mutable' happened to the nix system I'm using, it's updated to 17.03
but this did not change the problems.

Regards,

Michael