This allows Nix builders to call Nix to build derivations, with some
limitations.
Example:
let nixpkgs = fetchTarball channel:nixos-18.03; in
with import <nixpkgs> {};
runCommand "foo"
{
buildInputs = [ nix jq ];
NIX_PATH = "nixpkgs=${nixpkgs}";
}
''
hello=$(nix-build -E '(import <nixpkgs> {}).hello.overrideDerivation (args: { name = "hello-3.5"; })')
$hello/bin/hello
mkdir -p $out/bin
ln -s $hello/bin/hello $out/bin/hello
nix path-info -r --json $hello | jq .
''
This derivation makes a recursive Nix call to build GNU Hello and
symlinks it from its $out, i.e.
# ll ./result/bin/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 63 Jan 1 1970 hello -> /nix/store/s0awxrs71gickhaqdwxl506hzccb30y5-hello-3.5/bin/hello
# nix-store -qR ./result
/nix/store/hwwqshlmazzjzj7yhrkyjydxamvvkfd3-glibc-2.26-131
/nix/store/s0awxrs71gickhaqdwxl506hzccb30y5-hello-3.5
/nix/store/sgmvvyw8vhfqdqb619bxkcpfn9lvd8ss-foo
This is implemented as follows:
* Before running the outer builder, Nix creates a Unix domain socket
'.nix-socket' in the builder's temporary directory and sets
$NIX_REMOTE to point to it. It starts a thread to process
connections to this socket. (Thus you don't need to have nix-daemon
running.)
* The daemon thread uses a wrapper store (RestrictedStore) to keep
track of paths added through recursive Nix calls, to implement some
restrictions (see below), and to do some censorship (e.g. for
purity, queryPathInfo() won't return impure information such as
signatures and timestamps).
* After the build finishes, the output paths are scanned for
references to the paths added through recursive Nix calls (in
addition to the inputs closure). Thus, in the example above, $out
has a reference to $hello.
The main restriction on recursive Nix calls is that they cannot do
arbitrary substitutions. For example, doing
nix-store -r /nix/store/kmwd1hq55akdb9sc7l3finr175dajlby-hello-2.10
is forbidden unless /nix/store/kmwd... is in the inputs closure or
previously built by a recursive Nix call. This is to prevent
irreproducible derivations that have hidden dependencies on
substituters or the current store contents. Building a derivation is
fine, however, and Nix will use substitutes if available. In other
words, the builder has to present proof that it knows how to build a
desired store path from scratch by constructing a derivation graph for
that path.
Probably we should also disallow instantiating/building fixed-output
derivations (specifically, those that access the network, but
currently we have no way to mark fixed-output derivations that don't
access the network). Otherwise sandboxed derivations can bypass
sandbox restrictions and access the network.
When sandboxing is enabled, we make paths appear in the sandbox of the
builder by entering the mount namespace of the builder and
bind-mounting each path. This is tricky because we do a pivot_root()
in the builder to change the root directory of its mount namespace,
and thus the host /nix/store is not visible in the mount namespace of
the builder. To get around this, just before doing pivot_root(), we
branch a second mount namespace that shares its /nix/store mountpoint
with the parent.
Recursive Nix currently doesn't work on macOS in sandboxed mode
(because we can't change the sandbox policy of a running build) and in
non-root mode (because setns() barfs).
In a daemon-based Nix setup, some options cannot be overridden by a
client unless the client's user is considered trusted.
Currently, if an untrusted user tries to override one of those
options, we are silently ignoring it.
This can be pretty confusing in certain situations.
e.g. a user thinks he disabled the sandbox when in reality he did not.
We are now sending a warning message letting know the user some options
have been ignored.
Related to #1761.
This new structure makes more sense as there may be many sources rooting
the same store path. Many profiles can reference the same path but this
is even more true with /proc/<pid>/maps where distinct pids can and
often do map the same store path.
This implementation is also more efficient as the `Roots` map contains
only one entry per rooted store path.
It adds a new operation, cmdAddToStoreNar, that does the same thing as
the corresponding nix-daemon operation, i.e. call addToStore(). This
replaces cmdImportPaths, which has the major issue that it sends the
NAR first and the store path second, thus requiring us to store the
incoming NAR either in memory or on disk until we decide what to do
with it.
For example, this reduces the memory usage of
$ nix copy --to 'ssh://localhost?remote-store=/tmp/nix' /nix/store/95cwv4q54dc6giaqv6q6p4r02ia2km35-blender-2.79
from 267 MiB to 12 MiB.
Probably fixes#1988.
For example, this allows you to do run nix-daemon as a non-privileged
user:
eelco$ NIX_STATE_DIR=~/my-nix/nix/var nix-daemon --store ~/my-nix/
The NIX_STATE_DIR is still needed because settings.nixDaemonSocketFile
is not derived from settings.storeUri (and we can't derive it from the
store's state directory because we don't want to open the store in the
parent process).
Continuation of 97002b684c. This makes
the daemon use constant memory. For example, it reduces the daemon's
maximum RSS on
$ nix copy --from ~/my-nix --to daemon /nix/store/1n7x0yv8vq6zi90hfmian84vdhd04bgp-blender-2.79a
from 264 MiB to 7 MiB.
We now use a TunnelSource to prevent the connection from ending up in
an undefined state if an exception is thrown while the NAR is being
sent.
Issue https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/1681.
copyStorePath() now pipes the output of srcStore->narFromPath()
directly into dstStore->addToStore(). The sink used by the former is
converted into a source usable by the latter using
boost::coroutine2. This is based on [1].
This reduces the maximum resident size of
$ nix build --store ~/my-nix/ /nix/store/b0zlxla7dmy1iwc3g459rjznx59797xy-binutils-2.28.1 --substituters file:///tmp/binary-cache-xz/ --no-require-sigs
from 418592 KiB to 53416 KiB. (The previous commit also reduced the
runtime from ~4.2s to ~3.4s, not sure why.) A further improvement will
be to download files into a Sink.
[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/compare/master...Mathnerd314:dump-fix-coroutine#diff-dcbcac55a634031f9cc73707da6e4b18
Issue #1969.
Now that we use threads in lots of places, it's possible for
TunnelLogger::log() to be called asynchronously from other threads
than the main loop. So we need to ensure that STDERR_NEXT messages
don't clobber other messages.
Functions like copyClosure() had 3 bool arguments, which creates a
severe risk of mixing up arguments.
Also, implement copyClosure() using copyPaths().
Jörg Thalheim