Mdthbs

I'd like to know how to be able to run a service described like in a module on a non-Nix OS. For example let's say I have the file:

{config, pkgs, ... }:

{

  systemd.user.services.mytestservice = {

    description = "Mytestservice";

    script = "while true; do echo 'YES'; sleep 1; done";

    wantedBy = [ "default.target" ];

 };

}

(or eventually without the user: systemd.services.mytestservice =)

How can I compile it and run it on non-nixos OS, eventually by non-root users?

Aknowledgment: Thanks a lot to clever for all the explainations!

Do do that, let's first write the configuration file in myconfiguration.nix:

{config, pkgs, ... }:



{

  # You can actually remove the user, and still use it

  # as a user if you link it in ~/.config/systemd/user/

  # (do not forget to remove the `user` it in anything.nix

  # as well)

  systemd.user.services.mytestservice = {

   description = "Mytestservice";

   script = "while true; do echo 'YES'; sleep 1; done";

   # Or:

   # serviceConfig = {

   #   ExecStart = "${pkgs.bash}/bin/bash -c "while true; do echo 'YES'; sleep 1; done"";

   # };

   wantedBy = [ "default.target" ];

 };

}

Then, you can de several things:

• compile it


• install it

To compile only, you can do:

nix-build '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -I nixos-config=myconfiguration.nix -A 'config.systemd.user.units."mytestservice.service".unit'

The idea is that this loads the file default.nix in the folder /your/nixpkgs/copy/nixos/ (to get the path of nixpkgs, it checks the variable NIX_PATH that contains several "subkeys" like : NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=/your/nixpkgs/copy/:othervar=thepath), which is available online here. This file requires also <nixos-config>, to we use -I to add a nixos-config entry to the NIX_PATH environment variable. Then without the -A, it will try to build a full nixos, so we just specify that we want only this service unit.

This will produce a file mytestservice.service that will look like that:

$ cat result/mytestservice.service 

[Unit]

Description=Mytestservice



[Service]

Environment="LOCALE_ARCHIVE=/nix/store/zzhablipzgpv8mvlcvagqjnham6lr944-glibc-locales-2.27/lib/locale/locale-archive"

Environment="PATH=/nix/store/bv1lw6a2kw0mn2y3lxhi43180idx6sp9-coreutils-8.31/bin:/nix/store/s1n4vl1f3in3nacalrc3xam0vyzpsfvs-findutils-4.6.0/bin:/nix/store/7d9bi31h40hky30f5scqx7r6wn311ain-gnugrep-3.3/bin:/nix/store/qg4qbkbca7qapfzpa8p991yjf944fc3w-gnused-4.7/bin:/nix/store/6bvd29jny80ka8df9prr5hrl5yz7d98k-systemd-239.20190219/bin:/nix/store/bv1lw6a2kw0mn2y3lxhi43180idx6sp9-coreutils-8.31/sbin:/nix/store/s1n4vl1f3in3nacalrc3xam0vyzpsfvs-findutils-4.6.0/sbin:/nix/store/7d9bi31h40hky30f5scqx7r6wn311ain-gnugrep-3.3/sbin:/nix/store/qg4qbkbca7qapfzpa8p991yjf944fc3w-gnused-4.7/sbin:/nix/store/6bvd29jny80ka8df9prr5hrl5yz7d98k-systemd-239.20190219/sbin"

Environment="TZDIR=/nix/store/20wmykp8fj2izxdj8lic8ggcfpdid5ka-tzdata-2019a/share/zoneinfo"







ExecStart=/nix/store/1f0wk7l4p7xv257dci8xxqz1k8nai9va-unit-script-mytestservice-start 

Now, if you want to be able to call it, you need to install it:

nix-env -f '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -I nixos-config=myconfiguration.nix -iA 'config.systemd.user.units."mytestservice.service".unit'

This will link the mytestservice.service into ~/.nix-profile/mytestservice.service. But systemctl expects it to be in ~/.config/systemd/user/, so we link it:

ln -s ~/.nix-profile/mytestservice.service ~/.config/systemd/user/

Then we need to reload the daemon, and we can try playing with it:

systemctl --user daemon-reload

systemctl --user start mytestservice.service

Note however that the build/install commands are complicated and long to type, so we can create a file, say anything.nix, that will build everything for us:

let

  eval = import <nixpkgs/nixos> {

    configuration = ./myconfiguration.nix;

  };

  pkgs = import <nixpkgs>{};

in pkgs.buildEnv {

  name = "things";

  paths = [

    eval.config.systemd.user.units."mytestservice.service".unit

  ];

}

Now, you can compile with:

nix-build anything.nix

and install with

nix-env -f anything.nix -i things

Note that you may need to remove the first time the file we installed with the other method, by using something like:

nix-env --query

nix-env --uninstall unit-mytestservice.service

Finally, both codes systemd.services and systemd.services.users seems to be usable with this method :D