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