Re: How to put a file in /gnu/store and set its permissions

[Nathan Dehnel <ncdehnel@gmail.com>]

Thanks. I guess then I need to know how to put a file in /etc/ssh
without putting it in the store.

On Sat, Dec 4, 2021 at 11:13 PM Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Dec 04, 2021 at 04:47:12PM -0600, Nathan Dehnel wrote:
> > https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/G_002dExpressions.html
> > This says to set #:recursive? #t and guix will preserve its
> > permissions in the store. I have done this:
> >
> > (define guixrig_host_rsa_key
> >     (local-file "ssh/guixrig_host_rsa_key" #:recursive? #t))
> >
> > The file this expression puts in the store has permissions of 444,
> > despite the original being 400. How do I prevent guix from changing
> > permissions, or manually override them?
>
> In general, the store cannot be used to store secrets.  By design,
> everything in the store is made world-readable despite what permissions
> are set, for example in a package definition. I'm not sure if that's
> documented in the manual; I don't see it in the manual section The Store
> [1].
>
> I'm not sure exactly what code ensures that everything in the store is
> readable, but it's probably somewhere in the daemon [0], which is what
> writes to the store [1].
>
> The question of how to handle secrets in Guix has been discussed many
> times over the years and there are some solutions in various services;
> maybe there is a canonical solution now. But basically the idea is to
> store the secret outside of the store, like in /etc, as defined in a
> service configuration in config.scm.
>
> Hopefully some other people can join the conversation with more specific
> advice.
>
> [0]
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/nix?h=v1.3.0
>
> [1] I'd guess that canonicaliseTimestampAndPermissions is always called:
> https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/The-Store.html