mirror of
https://github.com/privatevoid-net/nix-super.git
synced 2024-11-30 09:36:15 +02:00
212 lines
8.3 KiB
XML
212 lines
8.3 KiB
XML
<chapter id='chap-installation'><title>Installation</title>
|
|
|
|
|
|
<sect1><title>Obtaining Nix</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>The easiest way to obtain Nix is to download a <ulink
|
|
url='http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/ST/Trace/Nix'>source
|
|
distribution</ulink>. RPMs for Red Hat, SuSE, and Fedore Core are
|
|
also available.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para>Alternatively, the most recent sources of Nix can be obtained
|
|
from its <ulink
|
|
url='https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/repos/trace/nix/trunk'>Subversion
|
|
repository</ulink>. For example, the following command will check out
|
|
the latest revision into a directory called <filename>nix</filename>:</para>
|
|
|
|
<screen>
|
|
$ svn checkout https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/repos/trace/nix/trunk nix</screen>
|
|
|
|
<para>Likewise, specific releases can be obtained from the <ulink
|
|
url='https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/repos/trace/nix/tags'>tags
|
|
directory</ulink> of the repository. If you don't have Subversion,
|
|
you can also download an automatically generated <ulink
|
|
url='https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/dist/trace/'>compressed
|
|
tar-file</ulink> of the head revision of the trunk.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect1>
|
|
|
|
|
|
<sect1><title>Prerequisites</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>The following prerequisites only apply when you build from
|
|
source. Binary releases (e.g., RPMs) have no prerequisites.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para>A fairly recent version of GCC/G++ is required. Version 2.95
|
|
and higher should work.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para>To build this manual and the man-pages you need the
|
|
<command>xmllint</command> and <command>xsltproc</command> programs,
|
|
which are part of the <literal>libxml2</literal> and
|
|
<literal>libxslt</literal> packages, respectively. You also need the
|
|
<ulink url='http://docbook.sourceforge.net/projects/xsl/'>DocBook XSL
|
|
stylesheets</ulink> and optionally the <ulink
|
|
url='http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbook-xml-4.2.zip'>
|
|
DocBook XML 4.2 DTD</ulink>. Note that these are only required if you
|
|
modify the manual sources or when you are building from the Subversion
|
|
repository.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para>To build the parser, very <emphasis>recent</emphasis> versions
|
|
of Bison and Flex are required. (This is because Nix needs GLR
|
|
support in Bison and reentrancy support in Flex.) For Bison, you need
|
|
version 1.875c or higher (1.875 does <emphasis>not</emphasis> work),
|
|
which can be obtained from the <ulink
|
|
url='ftp://alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bison'>GNU FTP server</ulink>. For
|
|
Flex, you need version 2.5.31, which is available on <ulink
|
|
url='http://lex.sourceforge.net/'>SourceForge</ulink>. Slightly older
|
|
versions may also work, but ancient versions like the ubiquitous
|
|
2.5.4a won't. Note that these are only required if you modify the
|
|
parser or when you are building from the Subversion repository.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para>Nix uses Sleepycat's Berkeley DB and CWI's ATerm library. These
|
|
are included in the Nix source distribution. If you build from the
|
|
Subversion repository, you must download them yourself and place them
|
|
in the <filename>externals/</filename> directory. See
|
|
<filename>externals/Makefile.am</filename> for the precise URLs of
|
|
these packages. Alternatively, if you already have them installed,
|
|
you can use <command>configure</command>'s <option>--with-bdb</option>
|
|
and <option>--with-aterm</option> options to point to their respective
|
|
locations. Note that Berkeley DB <emphasis>must</emphasis> be version
|
|
4.4; other versions may not have compatible database formats.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect1>
|
|
|
|
|
|
<sect1><title>Building Nix from source</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>After unpacking or checking out the Nix sources, issue the
|
|
following commands:
|
|
</para>
|
|
|
|
<screen>
|
|
$ ./configure <replaceable>options...</replaceable>
|
|
$ make
|
|
$ make install</screen>
|
|
|
|
<para>When building from the Subversion repository, these should be
|
|
preceded by the command:
|
|
</para>
|
|
|
|
<screen>
|
|
$ autoreconf -i</screen>
|
|
|
|
<para>The installation path can be specified by passing the
|
|
<option>--prefix=<replaceable>prefix</replaceable></option> to
|
|
<command>configure</command>. The default installation directory is
|
|
<filename>/nix</filename>. You can change this to any location you
|
|
like. You must have write permission to the
|
|
<replaceable>prefix</replaceable> path.</para>
|
|
|
|
<warning><para>It is advisable <emphasis>not</emphasis> to change the
|
|
installation prefix from its default, since doing so will in all
|
|
likelihood make it impossible to use derivations built on other
|
|
systems.</para></warning>
|
|
|
|
<para>If you want to rebuilt the documentation, pass the full path to
|
|
the DocBook XML catalog file (<filename>docbook.cat</filename>) and to
|
|
the DocBook XSL stylesheets using the
|
|
<option>--with-docbook-catalog=<replaceable>path</replaceable></option>
|
|
and
|
|
<option>--with-docbook-xsl=<replaceable>path</replaceable></option>
|
|
options.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect1>
|
|
|
|
|
|
<sect1><title>Installing from RPMs</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>RPM packages of Nix can be downloaded from <ulink
|
|
url='http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/ST/Trace/Nix' />. These RPMs should
|
|
work for most fairly recent releases of SuSE and Red Hat Linux. They
|
|
have been known to work work on SuSE Linux 8.1 and 9.0, and Red Hat
|
|
9.0. In fact, it should work on any RPM-based Linux distribution
|
|
based on <literal>glibc</literal> 2.3 or later.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para>Once downloaded, the RPMs can be installed or upgraded using
|
|
<command>rpm -U</command>. For example,</para>
|
|
|
|
<screen>
|
|
$ rpm -U nix-0.5pre664-1.i386.rpm</screen>
|
|
|
|
<para>The RPMs install into the directory <filename>/nix</filename>.
|
|
Nix can be uninstalled using <command>rpm -e nix</command>. After
|
|
this it will be necessary to manually remove the Nix store and other
|
|
auxiliary data:</para>
|
|
|
|
<screen>
|
|
$ rm -rf /nix/store
|
|
$ rm -rf /nix/var</screen>
|
|
|
|
</sect1>
|
|
|
|
|
|
<sect1><title>Permissions</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>All Nix operations must be performed under the user ID that owns
|
|
the Nix store and database
|
|
(<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/store</filename> and
|
|
<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/var/nix/db</filename>,
|
|
respectively). When installed from the RPM packages, these
|
|
directories are owned by <systemitem
|
|
class='username'>root</systemitem>.</para>
|
|
|
|
<sect2><title>Setuid installation</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>As a somewhat <emphasis>ad hoc</emphasis> hack, you can also
|
|
install the Nix binaries <quote>setuid</quote> so that a Nix store can
|
|
be shared among several users. To do this, configure Nix with the
|
|
<emphasis>--enable-setuid</emphasis> option. Nix will be installed as
|
|
owned by a user and group specified by the
|
|
<option>--with-nix-user=<parameter>user</parameter></option> and
|
|
<option>--with-nix-group=<parameter>group</parameter></option>
|
|
options. E.g.,
|
|
|
|
<screen>
|
|
$ ./configure --enable-setuid --with-nix-user=my_nix_user --with-nix-group=my_nix_group</screen>
|
|
|
|
The user and group default to <literal>nix</literal>. You should make
|
|
sure that both the user and the group exist. Any <quote>real</quote>
|
|
users that you want to allow access should be added to the Nix
|
|
group.</para>
|
|
|
|
<warning><para>A setuid installation should only by used if the users
|
|
in the Nix group are mutually trusted, since any user in that group
|
|
has the ability to change anything in the Nix store or database. For
|
|
instance, they could install a trojan horse in executables used by
|
|
other users.</para></warning>
|
|
|
|
<warning><para>On some platforms, the Nix binaries will be installed
|
|
as setuid <literal>root</literal>. They drop root privileges
|
|
immediately after startup and switch to the Nix user. The reason for
|
|
this is that both the real and effective user must be set to the Nix
|
|
user, and POSIX has no system call to do this. This is not the case
|
|
on systems that have the <function>setresuid()</function> system call
|
|
(such as Linux and FreeBSD), so on those systems the binaries are
|
|
simply owned by the Nix user.</para></warning>
|
|
|
|
</sect2>
|
|
|
|
</sect1>
|
|
|
|
|
|
<sect1><title>Using Nix</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>To use Nix, some environment variables should be set. In
|
|
particular, <envar>PATH</envar> should contain the directories
|
|
<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/bin</filename> and
|
|
<filename>~/.nix-profile/bin</filename>. The first directory contains
|
|
the Nix tools themselves, while <filename>~/.nix-profile</filename> is
|
|
a symbolic link to the current <emphasis>user environment</emphasis>
|
|
(an automatically generated package consisting of symlinks to
|
|
installed packages). The simplest way to set the required environment
|
|
variables is to include the file
|
|
<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/etc/profile.d/nix.sh</filename>
|
|
in your <filename>~/.bashrc</filename> (or similar), like this:</para>
|
|
|
|
<screen>
|
|
source <replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/etc/profile.d/nix.sh</screen>
|
|
|
|
</sect1>
|
|
|
|
|
|
</chapter>
|