nix-installer breaks sshd in Alpine Linux container.

[derekmahar]

After nix-installer 0.14.0 installs Nix 2.18.1 in an Alpine Linux container, sshd stops working and fails to start:

alpine-1:~$ /nix/nix-installer --version
nix-installer 0.14.0
alpine-1:~$ nix --version
nix (Nix) 2.18.1
alpine-1:~$ ps aux | grep sshd
  455 derek     0:00 grep sshd
alpine-1:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/sshd start
/var/empty must be owned by root and not group or world-writable.
 * ERROR: sshd failed to start
alpine-1:~$ ls -la /var/empty
total 8
drwxr-sr-x    2 nixbld32 nixbld        4096 Nov 22  2022 .
drwxr-xr-x   13 root     root          4096 Mar 25  2023 ..

sshd fails to start because it seems that nix-installer sets the owner of directory /var/empty to nixbld32 and group to nixbld, but sshd requires that root owns this directory. After manually changing the owner of /var/empty from nixbld32 to root and group from nixbld to root, sshd can start:

alpine-1:~$ sudo chown root:root /var/empty
alpine-1:~$ ls -la /var/empty
total 8
drwxr-sr-x    2 root     root          4096 Nov 22  2022 .
drwxr-xr-x   13 root     root          4096 Mar 25  2023 ..
alpine-1:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/sshd start
 * Starting sshd ... [ ok ]

[Hoverbear]

Thanks for this report, will try to get a fix in next release. :)