bug#34494: proot-based non-root setup: refusing to run with elevated privileges (UID 0)

[Florian Thevissen]

Hi Ludovic,

Not really answering your question, but would user namespaces be an  option for you? If so, <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2018-05/msg00139.html> might be a simpler option.

Thank you for the suggestion, this does look interesting.

However, the original use-case of using guix in a non-root scenario is no longer relevant to me: I was convincing enough to get guix root-installed on all relevant machines on which I do not have root access. So I can enjoy guix properly, now.

However, I could very well imagine guix to be used on a per-user basis, acting on some sub-directory of $HOME. Afterall, many (most?) desktop-systems are used by a single user - or so I would argue…

On the original topic - I recently learned that the mechanisms proot employs might just not work on all systems. So the issue may not per-se have been with guix, but with proot. I’m no expert on the subject though, and didn’t dig deeper yet.

Best regards,
Florian

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