Questions about guix-home-service-type for multi-user systems

Questions about guix-home-service-type for multi-user systems

[Kristoffer Ström]

Hello, I am running a multi-user system, and use guix-home-service-type
to setup the user home directories.

One of the users is the "main" user (A) that handle the guix pull, the
editing and setup of system configuration files etc, the other (B) is a user
account that should just be managed by user A.

The problem i'm having is that the packages that user B sees, seems to
be independent of running guix pull and a subsequent sudo -E guix system
reconfigure on user A.

Relative lines from reconfigure:

shepherd: Service user-homes has been started.
shepherd: Starting service guix-home-b...
shepherd: Service guix-home-b has been started.

When i run this in a virtual machine, the user B is instantiated with
the latest version of all packages, however it seems there is some state
persisting in user B that prevents it from seeing the latest version of
packages as provided by the pull and system reconfigure.

I do not want to run an extra guix pull in user B, since this feels like
a waste of resources, and i do want the profiles to be always in sync.

Is there some option i'm missing?

Best, Kristoffer Ström.

Re: Questions about guix-home-service-type for multi-user systems

[Edouard Klein]

The way I work around this is to use (guix-for-channels ...) in the
sytem's configuration, and never guix pull. The only guix is the
system's: /run/current-system/profile/bin/guix


Kristoffer Ström <kristoffer@rymdkoloni.se> writes:

> Hello, I am running a multi-user system, and use guix-home-service-type
> to setup the user home directories.
>
> One of the users is the "main" user (A) that handle the guix pull, the
> editing and setup of system configuration files etc, the other (B) is a user
> account that should just be managed by user A.
>
> The problem i'm having is that the packages that user B sees, seems to
> be independent of running guix pull and a subsequent sudo -E guix system
> reconfigure on user A.
>
> Relative lines from reconfigure:
>
> shepherd: Service user-homes has been started.
> shepherd: Starting service guix-home-b...
> shepherd: Service guix-home-b has been started.
>
> When i run this in a virtual machine, the user B is instantiated with
> the latest version of all packages, however it seems there is some state
> persisting in user B that prevents it from seeing the latest version of
> packages as provided by the pull and system reconfigure.
>
> I do not want to run an extra guix pull in user B, since this feels like
> a waste of resources, and i do want the profiles to be always in sync.
>
> Is there some option i'm missing?
>
> Best, Kristoffer Ström.

Re: Questions about guix-home-service-type for multi-user systems

[Tomas Volf]

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Edouard Klein <edou@rdklein.fr> writes:

> The way I work around this is to use (guix-for-channels ...) in the
> sytem's configuration, and never guix pull. The only guix is the
> system's: /run/current-system/profile/bin/guix

Out of curiosity, were you able to figure out how to cache the
computation, or do you live with reconfigure being a slow operation?

Tomas

-- 
There are only two hard things in Computer Science:
cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.

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Re: Questions about guix-home-service-type for multi-user systems

[Kristoffer Ström]

Tomas Volf <~@wolfsden.cz> writes:

> Edouard Klein <edou@rdklein.fr> writes:
>
>> The way I work around this is to use (guix-for-channels ...) in the
>> sytem's configuration, and never guix pull. The only guix is the
>> system's: /run/current-system/profile/bin/guix
>
> Out of curiosity, were you able to figure out how to cache the
> computation, or do you live with reconfigure being a slow operation?

I was just trying this out and ran into this very issue.

Another problem is that a system update no longer works without an
internet connection.

Re: Questions about guix-home-service-type for multi-user systems

[Tomas Volf]

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Kristoffer Ström <kristoffer@rymdkoloni.se> writes:

> Tomas Volf <~@wolfsden.cz> writes:
>
>> Edouard Klein <edou@rdklein.fr> writes:
>>
>>> The way I work around this is to use (guix-for-channels ...) in the
>>> sytem's configuration, and never guix pull. The only guix is the
>>> system's: /run/current-system/profile/bin/guix
>>
>> Out of curiosity, were you able to figure out how to cache the
>> computation, or do you live with reconfigure being a slow operation?
>
> I was just trying this out and ran into this very issue.
>
> Another problem is that a system update no longer works without an
> internet connection.
>

I managed to find a "solution" for that and described it in a blog post
here: https://wolfsden.cz/blog/post/what-goes-into-guix-shaped-hole.html

However be aware that is does have limitations and one needs to be
somewhat careful (see the update at the bottom of the article).

I just hoped someone found a better solution.

Have a nice day,
Tomas

-- 
There are only two hard things in Computer Science:
cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.

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Re: Questions about guix-home-service-type for multi-user systems

[Kristoffer Ström]

> I managed to find a "solution" for that and described it in a blog post
> here: https://wolfsden.cz/blog/post/what-goes-into-guix-shaped-hole.html
>
> However be aware that is does have limitations and one needs to be
> somewhat careful (see the update at the bottom of the article).
>
> I just hoped someone found a better solution.

In the end i just made a bash-script that runs guix pull as the main
user and then uses sudo to overwrite all /home/*/.config/guix/current
symlinks with the same version.

Crude but it works, thank you for your blog!