> Also why do this as root?  It’s a Bad Idea.)

Because I use Guix in a chroot.  Can it still be harmful?

> Any hints in test-suite.log or tests/*.log?

No.

> Could you check the permissions on /nix/var/nix/daemon-socket/socket?

srw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 2013-06-22 01:34 socket

I've found out that the following works:

# ./pre-inst-env guix-daemon --build-users-group=nixbld &
# ./pre-inst-env guix build -K hello

But 'make check' fails for some reason.