On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 11:38:35PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> I suppose it works if you start nscd on this Debian machine (as is the
> case on GuixSD), right?

Yes, `apt-get install nscd` does everything necessary to set up and
start nscd, and then guix-daemon works.

> The question is why isn’t guix-daemon falling back to loading
> libnss_files and reading /etc/groups directly.
> 
> How is this guix-daemon built?  What libc is it linked against?
> Does /etc/nsswitch.conf exist and what does it contain?

This guix-daemon is based on core-updates commit 76ef53eb828 (gnu:
glslang: Update to commit b5b084624), on x86_64-linux.

It's linked against
/gnu/store/n6acaivs0jwiwpidjr551dhdni5kgpcr-glibc-2.26.105-g0890d5379c.

nsswitch.conf looks like this:

$ ls -l /etc/nsswitch.conf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 529 Jun 13  2017 /etc/nsswitch.conf
$ cat /etc/nsswitch.conf 
# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# Example configuration of GNU Name Service Switch functionality.
# If you have the `glibc-doc-reference' and `info' packages installed, try:
# `info libc "Name Service Switch"' for information about this file.

passwd:         compat
group:          compat
shadow:         compat
gshadow:        files

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns
networks:       files

protocols:      db files
services:       db files
ethers:         db files
rpc:            db files

netgroup:       nis