Re: How to use Guix with sssd, not nscd, on a foreign distro?

[Lars-Dominik Braun]

Hi Chris,

> The Fedora document explains that at least the hosts cache will be
> handled by systemd-resolved.  Can I expect Guix-built programs to "try
> to use systemd" when resolving host names, or is additional
> configuration likely to be required?
as far as I know systemd also plugs into the nss mechanism, i.e. it’s
a shared library libnss_systemd.so from the host system, which would
be dlopen’ed.

> Regarding sssd specifically, how can I arrange for a Guix-built program
> to "try to use sssd" first?
I believe nscd is a glibc internal mechanism, which – if enabled –
will be queried before using the nsswitch mechanism. Thus it works to
circumvent the shared library dilemma on foreign systems. Programs do
not use sssd directly (that’s the whole point of nss/sssd). It plugs
into nsswitch just like systemd and therefore does nothing for our
use case.

nixOS seems to have the same problem, with suggestions for solutions like
[1].

So in conclusion I don’t think sssd is an appropriate replacement for
our use-case.

Cheers,
Lars

[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/155655