Any tips on install nix on MacOS without T2 chips

ankitiitb1069 · March 23, 2021, 2:45pm

I have been trying to install nix, tried a lot of different approaches, not one is working, can someone help me with what exactly I need to do.

I tried: sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --darwin-use-unencrypted-nix-store-volume
I get error apfs.utils -B flag, since -B flag is no more supported

With other installation instructions, I was getting error about read only /nix

abathur · March 23, 2021, 4:53pm

The installer should be:

trying both the old apfs.util -B flag, and the new apfs.util -t flag
swallowing the output from both invocations

github.com

NixOS/nix/blob/8803753666023882515404177b08f3f8bdad52a0/scripts/create-darwin-volume.sh#L30-L41


      
          create_synthetic_objects(){
              # Big Sur takes away the -B flag we were using and replaces it
              # with a -t flag that appears to do the same thing (but they
              # don't behave exactly the same way in terms of return values).
              # This feels a little dirty, but as far as I can tell the
              # simplest way to get the right one is to just throw away stderr
              # and call both... :]
              {
                  /System/Library/Filesystems/apfs.fs/Contents/Resources/apfs.util -t || true # Big Sur
                  /System/Library/Filesystems/apfs.fs/Contents/Resources/apfs.util -B || true # Catalina
              } >/dev/null 2>&1
          }

The fact that you are seeing this output makes me wonder if sh is an unexpected shell.

Can you run and report the output of:

type -a sh
sh --version

ankitiitb1069 · March 23, 2021, 6:18pm

For type -a sh
sh is /bin/sh
And for sh --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin20) Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

abathur · March 23, 2021, 6:41pm

No surprises there, unfortunately.

What macOS version does sw_vers report?

A full log of the install run may also help.

ankitiitb1069 · March 23, 2021, 6:59pm

Finally able to do it, with some pointers from comments on 2925 issue
sudo vi /etc/synthetic.conf
sudo diskutil apfs addVolume disk1 APFSX Nix -mountpoint /nix
sudo diskutil enableOwnership /nix
sudo chown -R <username> /nix
sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --darwin-use-unencrypted-nix-store-volume
This sequence worked for me