Can't update configuration after home-manager update

Help
1

Hi, I’m getting an error when trying to update my home-manager install.

$ nix-channel --update && home-manager switch                                  
unpacking channels...
error: attribute 'defaultOverridePriority' missing

       at /home/haemin/.nix-defexpr/channels/home-manager/modules/misc/nixpkgs.nix:134:25:

          133|       # `_pkgs`, see https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/pull/993
          134|       pkgs = mkOverride modules.defaultOverridePriority _pkgs;
             |                         ^
          135|       pkgs_i686 =
(use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)

since PR (Clean up deprecated lib functions by ncfavier · Pull Request #4068 · nix-community/home-manager · GitHub).

The parent commit in master (2bbfc3a78afb4ea60345a5660d8d4173da66c884) is fine.

I have a suspicion that this is due to my nix install being old but I’m unsure how to fix this.

$ nix --version
nix (Nix) 2.11.1
$ which nix
/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin/nix

Whatever I do in home-manger doesn’t seem to touch /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin directory, which is in my PATH (since my nix install? I don’t know).

Could someone help me out to

  • verify it’s actually my old nix install that’s causing the problem
  • share a link to how to update this nix install

I’ve tried this page: Upgrading Nix - Nix Reference Manual

$ nix-env --install --attr nixpkgs.nix nixpkgs.cacert; systemctl daemon-reload; systemctl restart nix-daemon                            
 
installing 'nix-2.11.0'
installing 'nss-cacert-3.83'
building '/nix/store/yhg4dccsa62lcxvhb5bac8hz2nbxqbf8-user-environment.drv'...
error: files '/nix/store/96jbphsyf2dhrqpc3acyshaj2smx2fw0-home-manager-path/bin/nix' and '/nix/store/3qilwj844f5wz18mh0lc6ffzj4gcca02-nix-2.11.0/bin/nix' have the same priority 5; use 'nix-env --set-flag priority NUMBER INSTALLED_PKGNAME' or type 'nix profile install --help' if using 'nix profile' to find out howto change the priority of one of the conflicting packages (0 being the highest priority)
error: builder for '/nix/store/yhg4dccsa62lcxvhb5bac8hz2nbxqbf8-user-environment.drv' failed with exit code 1;
       last 1 log lines:
       > error: files '/nix/store/96jbphsyf2dhrqpc3acyshaj2smx2fw0-home-manager-path/bin/nix' and '/nix/store/3qilwj844f5wz18mh0lc6ffzj4gcca02-nix-2.11.0/bin/nix' have the same priority 5; use 'nix-env --set-flag priority NUMBER INSTALLED_PKGNAME' or type 'nix profile install --help' if using 'nix profile' to find out howto change the priority of one of the conflicting packages (0 being the highest priority)
       For full logs, run 'nix log /nix/store/yhg4dccsa62lcxvhb5bac8hz2nbxqbf8-user-environment.drv'.

(It is very strange that it’s trying to install nix-2.11.0)

  • or if I’m completely looking at a wrong place, point me to a right direction?

Additional details

$ nix-channel --list                         
home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/2bbfc3a78afb4ea60345a5660d8d4173da66c884.tar.gz
unstable https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable
$ uname -a
Linux haemin-TFX4270H 6.3.2-1-liquorix-amd64 #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT liquorix 6.3-1ubuntu1~jammy (2023-05-13) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
2

That error means your nixpkgs is too old. Try sudo nix-channel --update.

3

Thanks for the suggestion. It appears something was not right with my nix installation, ended up re-installing nix and it seems to be fine.
I guess I’m lucky because none of my packages required a lot of compiling/rebuilding :smile: