User.environment does not exist

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1

Hello all,

I’m about 8 hours into my first nixOS config, and I’ve reached a total blocker. To help with troubleshooting, I’ve put the entire config on a public github here:

There are two (possibly related) problems:

  1. Whenever I try to build a flake, I get the error:

error: The optionhome-manager.users.gordy.environment’ does not exist.`

The full stack trace is in the readme of the above github repo

  1. This error might be happening because the home config is not recognized by the flake. When I run nix flake show it lists the homeConfig and homeManagerModules as “unknown”
[gordy@nixos:~/mysystem]$ nix flake show ~/mysystem
path:/home/gordy/mysystem?lastModified=1723015892&narHash=sha256-baVHD%2BPpBbmTAgJz9pW6pZLrGJzHPbZNfX1Rr8oJEM4%3D
├───homeConfigurations: unknown
├───homeManagerModules: unknown
├───nixosConfigurations
│   └───work: NixOS configuration
└───nixosModules
    └───default: NixOS module

Both chatGPT and I are totally stuck on this. Things I’ve tried without effect are:

  • Adding an environment property to the user schema in /modules/nixos/bundles/home-manager/users.nix with a default value as an empty dict
  • Commenting out every line that invokes environment anywhere in the project
  • Adding an environment property to the userSettings property in hosts/default/configuration.nix

I would really appreciate some assistance with this, thank you!

2

What command? You don’t build a flake, you build an output of the flake.

And nix flake show is irrelevant, it doesn’t know HM properly.

EDIT: I saw the command in the readme, so are you using standalone HM or HM as a NixOS module? (Pick one.)

3

Thanks for the quick response! @waffle8946

What command? You don’t build a flake, you build an output of the flake.

nixos-rebuild switch --flake ~/mysystem/#work

so are you using standalone HM or HM as a NixOS module

I’m trying to use it as a nixos module. I like the idea of flake as orchestrator and everything else (including HM and nix itself) as modules inside it.

4

That means two things:

  • homeConfigurations is no longer relevant here (you could remove it, for your own clarity)
  • you’re likely accidentally importing a nixos module into your hm config, based on the error.

I can’t really say further as you’re using someone else’s abstraction, so you’d likely want to ask them for help or avoid their abstraction entirely and just start simple (my recommendation).

5

Thanks for the tip! I’ll do another search for nix modules in HM. There is literally modules/home-manager/nix.nix which smells a lot like a nix module in home manager.

Otherwise, I’ll just fork GitHub - Misterio77/nix-starter-configs: Simple and documented config templates to help you get started with NixOS + home-manager + flakes. All the boilerplate you need! and start over again.

6

I would strongly recommend against using misterio’s configs, as again, that’s someone else’s abstraction (and specifically misterio’s configs also have significant problems).

All you need to create a flake.nix for a NixOS configuration (assuming nixos-unstable here) is the following:

{
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
    # add other inputs as applicable
  };
  outputs =
    { nixpkgs, ... }@inputs:
    {
      nixosConfigurations = {
        # replace HOSTNAME with whatever you use in `networking.hostName`
        HOSTNAME = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
          modules = [
            # replace with whatever your config's entrypoint is
            ./configuration.nix
          ];
          specialArgs = { inherit inputs; }
        };
      };
    };
}

Then follow the HM manual if you want to use HM, by adding only the additional bits mentioned in Home Manager Manual.

If you need help writing a config from scratch, ask! Don’t mindlessly copy others.

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7

@waffle8946 good timing; I was thiiiiiis close to forking misterio77’s configs.

Instead, I’ve put together a plan for how I want to approach building a config from scratch- would you mind giving some feedback?

  • I like the idea of separate system and user configs; however as I’m the only one using this machine, it doesn’t make sense to start with multiple user profiles, and I can get away with shared system & user configs.
    • The “system configs” would be things like GPU drivers, window manager, nix garbage collection / generation trimming, datetime, and default editor
    • These system configs would not go in home.nix, but in configuration.nix
  • I like having the configuration.nix outside of /etc/ for rootless access
  • There are a good handful of packages I want to install, but many of them don’t have special config requirements. I can get away with having 30+ packages listed in home.nix

I think I can get away with a much smaller project and still meet these criteria. Probable something like:

mysystem/
    L flake.nix # simple flake orchestrator
    L home.nix # define user config here
    L configuration.nix # define system config here
    L hardware-configuration.nix # no touch-y
    L modules/
        default.nix # put all the package config here
8

Sure, that’s a reasonable start.
And yes, your config does not need to be in /etc, it can be in any directory or on github or so on.

If you want to modularise later on, you definitely can start adding more directories/files for various hosts/users/whatever, but not necessary to start out.

9

There are many configs out there for your reference. Here’s mine.

1 Like