Hello,
Following the 23.11 I tried creating a NixOS image using the very helpful systemd-repart integration, and home-manager inside to seed the user configuration.
When starting the resulting image, the home-manager-user systemd service start fails with the following error :
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos systemd[1]: Failed to start Home Manager environment for example.
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos systemd[1]: home-manager-example.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos systemd[1]: home-manager-example.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: Then try activating your Home Manager configuration again.
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: nix-env -e {package name}
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: and if there is a conflicting package you can remove it with
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: nix-env -q
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: "nix-env -i"? Try running
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: Perhaps there is a conflict with a package that was installed using
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: Oops, Nix failed to install your new Home Manager profile!
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[969]: error: path '/nix/store/dn95z7893jvhzjy0zdvpphx5yb6mp1n2-home-manager-path' does not exist and cannot be created
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[969]: /nix/store/dn95z7893jvhzjy0zdvpphx5yb6mp1n2-home-manager-path
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[969]: don't know how to build these paths:
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[969]: installing 'home-manager-path'
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: Activating installPackages
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: Activating writeBoundary
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: Activating checkLinkTargets
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: Activating checkFilesChanged
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos hm-activate-example[945]: Starting Home Manager activation
Dec 25 10:49:20 nixos systemd[1]: Starting Home Manager environment for example...
Here is the default.nix configuration outputing a raw disk image, very similar to the manual :
let
pkgs = import <nixos-23.11> { };
efiArch = pkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.efiArch;
home-manager = fetchTarball https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-23.11.tar.gz;
in
(pkgs.nixos [
({ config, lib, pkgs, modulesPath, ... }: {
imports = [
"${modulesPath}/image/repart.nix"
(import "${home-manager}/nixos")
"${modulesPath}/profiles/qemu-guest.nix"
];
boot.loader.grub.enable = false;
fileSystems."/".device = "/dev/disk/by-label/nixos";
users.users.example = {
isNormalUser = true;
password = "example";
};
users.users.root.password = "root";
home-manager.users.example = {
home.file."testhm".text = "OK";
home.stateVersion = "23.11";
};
image.repart = {
name = "image";
partitions = {
"esp" = {
contents = {
"/EFI/BOOT/BOOT${lib.toUpper efiArch}.EFI".source =
"${pkgs.systemd}/lib/systemd/boot/efi/systemd-boot${efiArch}.efi";
"/loader/entries/nixos.conf".source = pkgs.writeText "nixos.conf" ''
title NixOS
linux /EFI/nixos/kernel.efi
initrd /EFI/nixos/initrd.efi
options init=${config.system.build.toplevel}/init ${toString config.boot.kernelParams}
'';
"/EFI/nixos/kernel.efi".source =
"${config.boot.kernelPackages.kernel}/${config.system.boot.loader.kernelFile}";
"/EFI/nixos/initrd.efi".source =
"${config.system.build.initialRamdisk}/${config.system.boot.loader.initrdFile}";
};
repartConfig = {
Type = "esp";
Format = "vfat";
SizeMinBytes = "96M";
};
};
"root" = {
storePaths = [ config.system.build.toplevel ];
repartConfig = {
Type = "root";
Format = "ext4";
Label = "nixos";
Minimize = "guess";
};
};
};
};
})
]).image
The resulting disk image can be converted easily in a qcow2 and booted (UEFI paths may need to be adjusted, those are for Archlinux) :
qemu-img convert -O qcow2 ./result/image.raw ./nix.qcow2 qemu-system-x86_64 -machine pc-q35-8.2 -m size=512000k -cpu host -drive media=disk,format=qcow2,file=./nix.qcow2 -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly=on,file=/usr/share/edk2/x64/OVMF_CODE.fd -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly=on,file=/usr/share/edk2/x64/OVMF_VARS.fd -enable-kvm
Contrary to what nix-env -i reports during HM service activation, the store path does exist. I can’t figure out why nix-env fails.
File: /nix/store/dn95z7893jvhzjy0zdvpphx5yb6mp1n2-home-manager-path/
Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory
Device: 253,2 Inode: 30689 Links: 5
Access: (0555/dr-xr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2023-12-25 10:39:01.000000000 +0000
Modify: 1970-01-01 00:00:01.000000000 +0000
Change: 2023-12-25 10:38:55.000000000 +0000
Birth: 2023-12-25 10:39:07.000000000 +0000
The issue looks like the one reported here.
Thanks for your help