Installation error: symlinking to /mnt/etc

Help
1

Hello, I’m doing a fresh install of NixOS 21.05, and am getting the following error at the end of the installation:

setting up /etc...
/etc/nixos directory contains user files. Symlinking may fail. at /nix/store/vn1xs9s2akf79y1pbya2qldydbf2b22m-setup-etc.pl line 99.
Warning: something's wrong at /nix/store/vn1xs9s2akf79y1pbya2qldydbf2b22m-setup-etc.pl line 120.
/etc/tmpfiles.d/journal-nocow.conf:26: Failed to resolve specifier: uninitialized /etc detected, skipping
All rules containing unresolvable specifiers will be skipped.

The only user files I put in /mnt/etc before running the install were:

/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
/mnt/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix
/mnt/etc/users/bgibson (just a hash of my login password)

ls -al /mnt/etc shows it has been filled up anyway, so my user files do not seem to have prevented installation despite the errors. Or did something fail to install there?

Full end-of-installation error:

building '/nix/store/xkb85zcwfaw07hh7qk6zc1hsp7a3gigg-nixos-system-z11pa-d8-21.05.993.93963c27b93.drv'...
/nix/store/z403mp2945va6hvlpdcf9191qhsld016-nixos-system-z11pa-d8-21.05.993.93963c27b93
evaluating file '/nix/store/f475vzr63m77nfww608dni9385ahpvl1-nix-2.3.12/share/nix/corepkgs/derivation.nix'
copying channel...
these paths will be fetched (0.00 MiB download, 89.76 MiB unpacked):
  /nix/store/hci44cazagf11rky3x753zlz9q64nf08-nixos-21.05.993.93963c27b93
copying path '/nix/store/hci44cazagf11rky3x753zlz9q64nf08-nixos-21.05.993.93963c27b93' to 'local'...
installing the boot loader...
setting up /etc...
/etc/nixos directory contains user files. Symlinking may fail. at /nix/store/vn1xs9s2akf79y1pbya2qldydbf2b22m-setup-etc.pl line 99.
Warning: something's wrong at /nix/store/vn1xs9s2akf79y1pbya2qldydbf2b22m-setup-etc.pl line 120.
/etc/tmpfiles.d/journal-nocow.conf:26: Failed to resolve specifier: uninitialized /etc detected, skipping
All rules containing unresolvable specifiers will be skipped.
updating GRUB 2 menu...
installing the GRUB 2 EFI boot loader into /boot...
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
/nix/store/6l9f4jf1bvk12jrspr692ff1fkj304fm-grub-2.06-rc1/sbin/grub-install: warning: cannot open directory `/nix/store/6l9f4jf1bvk12jrspr692ff1fkj304fm-grub-2.06-rc1/share/locale': No such file or directory.
Installation finished. No error reported.
installation finished!
2

did you ever solve this? I’m experiencing exactly the same on an old (BIOS only => using BIOS mode) laptop I am installing afresh. After this, the system won’t boot with No system disk or disk error (so not even an initial grub).

EDIT: oh, :man_facepalming: it wasn’t a fatal error after all, I forgot to set the bootable flag on /dev/sda1 with fdisk … At least it’s booting now, so the rest will be “easy” as usual…

1 Like