Re: gnu-system-demo feedback

[Ludovic Courtès]

address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) skribis:

> Walter Franzini <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> On Mon, Oct 14 2013, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>>> 3. running guix gc as root empties /etc (broken symlinks)
>>>> 4. running guix gc as guest (!) empties /etc (broken symlinks)
>>>
>>> A bug: I forgot to register them as GC roots (see gnu/system/vm.scm.)
>>
>> Ok for the bug about GC roots, but I expected a 'guest' not to be able
>> to alter the system state (/etc).
>
> Unprivileged users can access the store via the daemon.  Notably, they
> can run the GC.
>
> The GC only ever deletes files that are no longer referenced.  These
> /etc files were clearly still referenced, but the GC just didn’t know
> about it.

I probably wasn’t clear.  The GC only takes care of files under
/nix/store, and it cannot remove anything outside of that directory.

The files in /etc are symlinks to files under /nix/store, and it’s those
files that were removed.  The symlinks were still there, just dangling.

Ludo’.