Built with custom store, every package install fails with error: path is not in the Nix store

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1

I cannot use /nix for various reasons so I built Nix from source using --with-store-dir=/opt/nix/store and --localstatedir=/opt/nix/var.

Although the install succeeded, anything I try to install errors with BadStorePath and NotInStore. The message is error: path ‘[thepath] is not in the Nix store’

1 Like
2

You need a bit more than that, see this post for an example.

3

I encounted the same problem, both nix-env and flake don’t work after building nix with custom store path. I have changed the path of nix store, but nix still refer to /nix/store while evaluating nix-expr.

Image 2024-1-17 at 15.04
Image 2024-1-17 at 15.041602×790 238 KB

The blog in @rohit post is confusing and not helpful for me.It only list lots of steps but doesn’t explain why I need to them, such as patching the souce code and adding a configuration file in ~/.config/nix/nixpkgs

4

Generally running nix with different store path than /nix/store is quite difficult, as all the paths encoded in binaries etc… refer to there. You basically won’t ever hit the binary cache and have to rebuild everything.
https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/1971

I’m not sure if this is possible to solve even with content addressed nix due to the paths being hardcoded into binaries Towards a content-addressed model for Nix

You best bet would be to some sort of namespacing, so that the programs see /nix in their namespace, but in reality it resides somewhere else.

5

The first step is correct. Were you able to install the nix from nixpkgs? You’d need to either define it with an overlay:

final: prev: {
  nix = prev.nix.override {
    storeDir = "$NIX_PREFIX/nix/store";
    stateDir = "$NIX_PREFIX/nix/var";
  };
}

or use the correct environment variables at runtime.