Better support for single-user systems

Better support for single-user systems

[Taylan Kammer]

Most desktop users have single unix account and are also in control of
root.  These users might not want to differentiate between the current
guix version of root and their normal user.  They might also not want
to differentiate between the packages available to root and the normal
user.  As such I would propose the following two improvements:

- Allow a system-wide guix installation that's updated with a special
  variant of 'guix pull' executed by root

- Allow direct addition of packages to the system profile to obviate
  the need of running a full 'guix system reconfigure' after adding
  packages to the system configuration

(The latter might show a reminder that if the package isn't also added
to the system config, it will be removed again on the next system
reconfiguration.)

Currently I use a hack to imitate #1 where I have a unix account
called 'guix-user' with which I run 'guix pull', and both root and my
normal user have symlinks to that user's current guix.  For #2 I don't
have a workaround; I just re-run 'guix system reconfigure' every time.


What do others think?


- Taylan

Re: Better support for single-user systems

[Clément Lassieur]

Hi Taylan,

You don't need to use the root account at all. 

Taylan Kammer <taylan.kammer@gmail.com> writes:

> Most desktop users have single unix account and are also in control of
> root.  These users might not want to differentiate between the current
> guix version of root and their normal user.  They might also not want
> to differentiate between the packages available to root and the normal
> user.  As such I would propose the following two improvements:
>
> - Allow a system-wide guix installation that's updated with a special
>   variant of 'guix pull' executed by root

You can use you current user's guix installation for all commands that
need root's permissions with 'sudo -E', so you can consider that your
current user's guix account is the system-wide guix account.

For example, 'sudo -E guix system reconfigure config.scm' updates the
system with your user's guix.

> - Allow direct addition of packages to the system profile to obviate
>   the need of running a full 'guix system reconfigure' after adding
>   packages to the system configuration

You don't need this if you use your user's guix installation only.

> (The latter might show a reminder that if the package isn't also added
> to the system config, it will be removed again on the next system
> reconfiguration.)
>
> Currently I use a hack to imitate #1 where I have a unix account
> called 'guix-user' with which I run 'guix pull', and both root and my
> normal user have symlinks to that user's current guix.  For #2 I don't
> have a workaround; I just re-run 'guix system reconfigure' every time.

You definitely don't need this :-)

Clément

Re: Better support for single-user systems

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Clément,

> You don't need to use the root account at all. 

One wrinkle is that the binary installation method installs Guix for the
root user and takes the guix-daemon from there.

-- 
Ricardo

Re: Better support for single-user systems

[Clément Lassieur]

Hi Ricardo,

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:

> Hi Clément,
>
>> You don't need to use the root account at all. 
>
> One wrinkle is that the binary installation method installs Guix for the
> root user and takes the guix-daemon from there.

Taylan was talking about 'reconfiguring' and thus, I think, about
GuixSD.  GuixSD's guix-daemon is updated on reconfigure, not from the
root account.

(For the foreign distro installation, an extra step is needed indeed:
one needs to get /etc/systemd/system/guix-daemon.service to point to the
user's Guix current profile so to remove the need for the Guix of root.)

Clément

Re: Better support for single-user systems

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Clément Lassieur <clement@lassieur.org> skribis:

> You can use you current user's guix installation for all commands that
> need root's permissions with 'sudo -E', so you can consider that your
> current user's guix account is the system-wide guix account.
>
> For example, 'sudo -E guix system reconfigure config.scm' updates the
> system with your user's guix.

I concur with Clément here.

However, I think there might be value for better support of multi-user
systems.  :-)  That is, in some contexts such as HPC clusters or even
simply multi-user laptops, it might be useful for root to run “guix pull
--all” or something, and have all the user Guixes updated, or maybe only
for users who have never run ‘guix pull’.

Food for thought…

Ludo’.

Re: Better support for single-user systems

[Taylan Kammer]

Clément Lassieur <clement@lassieur.org> writes:

> Hi Taylan,
>
> You don't need to use the root account at all. 
>
> Taylan Kammer <taylan.kammer@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Most desktop users have single unix account and are also in control of
>> root.  These users might not want to differentiate between the current
>> guix version of root and their normal user.  They might also not want
>> to differentiate between the packages available to root and the normal
>> user.  As such I would propose the following two improvements:
>>
>> - Allow a system-wide guix installation that's updated with a special
>>   variant of 'guix pull' executed by root
>
> You can use you current user's guix installation for all commands that
> need root's permissions with 'sudo -E', so you can consider that your
> current user's guix account is the system-wide guix account.
>
> For example, 'sudo -E guix system reconfigure config.scm' updates the
> system with your user's guix.

Aha, thanks, I didn't know about this possibility.

>> - Allow direct addition of packages to the system profile to obviate
>>   the need of running a full 'guix system reconfigure' after adding
>>   packages to the system configuration
>
> You don't need this if you use your user's guix installation only.

Hmm, sometimes I prefer to just log in as root with 'sudo -i' when doing
work where I'll need root privileges repeatedly.  When I do that, my
normal user's packages won't be available.  But I guess 'sudo -E bash'
might be a solution.  I'll try that for now. :-)


Taylan