GNU bug report logs - #42983
"sudo -E guix pull" breaks ~/.config/guix/current for regular user

Previous Next

Full log

Message #17 received at 42983 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Leo Famulari <leo <at> famulari.name>
To: Danny Milosavljevic <dannym <at> scratchpost.org>
Cc: 42983 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#42983: "sudo -E guix pull" breaks ~/.config/guix/current for
 regular user
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2020 17:45:47 -0400

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 11:24:43PM +0200, Danny Milosavljevic wrote:
> Paul did not know that it is a per-user operation.
> 
> I did almost exactly the same thing when I was a new guix user.
> That's pretty much what one is used to from Debian etc.

I see. Coming from Debian, I also had trouble learning the differences
between various options of sudo, and also the differences between login
shells, interactive shells, etc. They don't matter on Debian, but they
do matter for Guix.

> I don't really know whether it should do anything useful, but the current
> situation is seriously weird.

Considering how often people stumble on this, I've been wondering if
Guix should handle privilege escalation internally, rather than asking
users to learn these arcane details of Unix.

Systemd does that. For example, given an operation that requires
privileges, if I attempt to run it without privileges, it will use
polkit (I think) to escalate safely. It's optional and not all distros
enable it by default. It looks like this:

------
$ systemctl restart guix-daemon 
==== AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.systemd1.manage-units ===
Authentication is required to restart 'guix-daemon.service'.
Authenticating as: leo,,, (leo)
Password: 
==== AUTHENTICATION COMPLETE ===
------

[signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.