Currently if you want to properly chroot a systemd service, you could do
it using BindReadOnlyPaths=/nix/store or use a separate derivation which
gathers the runtime closure of the service you want to chroot. The
former is the easier method and there is also a method directly offered
by systemd, called ProtectSystem, which still leaves the whole store
accessible. The latter however is a bit more involved, because you need
to bind-mount each store path of the runtime closure of the service you
want to chroot.
This can be achieved using pkgs.closureInfo and a small derivation that
packs everything into a systemd unit, which later can be added to
systemd.packages.
However, this process is a bit tedious, so the changes here implement
this in a more generic way.
Now if you want to chroot a systemd service, all you need to do is:
{
systemd.services.myservice = {
description = "My Shiny Service";
wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
confinement.enable = true;
serviceConfig.ExecStart = "${pkgs.myservice}/bin/myservice";
};
}
If more than the dependencies for the ExecStart* and ExecStop* (which
btw. also includes script and {pre,post}Start) need to be in the chroot,
it can be specified using the confinement.packages option. By default
(which uses the full-apivfs confinement mode), a user namespace is set
up as well and /proc, /sys and /dev are mounted appropriately.
In addition - and by default - a /bin/sh executable is provided, which
is useful for most programs that use the system() C library call to
execute commands via shell.
Unfortunately, there are a few limitations at the moment. The first
being that DynamicUser doesn't work in conjunction with tmpfs, because
systemd seems to ignore the TemporaryFileSystem option if DynamicUser is
enabled. I started implementing a workaround to do this, but I decided
to not include it as part of this pull request, because it needs a lot
more testing to ensure it's consistent with the behaviour without
DynamicUser.
The second limitation/issue is that RootDirectoryStartOnly doesn't work
right now, because it only affects the RootDirectory option and doesn't
include/exclude the individual bind mounts or the tmpfs.
A quirk we do have right now is that systemd tries to create a /usr
directory within the chroot, which subsequently fails. Fortunately, this
is just an ugly error and not a hard failure.
The changes also come with a changelog entry for NixOS 19.03, which is
why I asked for a vote of the NixOS 19.03 stable maintainers whether to
include it (I admit it's a bit late a few days before official release,
sorry for that):
@samueldr:
Via pull request comment[1]:
+1 for backporting as this only enhances the feature set of nixos,
and does not (at a glance) change existing behaviours.
Via IRC:
new feature: -1, tests +1, we're at zero, self-contained, with no
global effects without actively using it, +1, I think it's good
@lheckemann:
Via pull request comment[2]:
I'm neutral on backporting. On the one hand, as @samueldr says,
this doesn't change any existing functionality. On the other hand,
it's a new feature and we're well past the feature freeze, which
AFAIU is intended so that new, potentially buggy features aren't
introduced in the "stabilisation period". It is a cool feature
though? :)
A few other people on IRC didn't have opposition either against late
inclusion into NixOS 19.03:
@edolstra: "I'm not against it"
@Infinisil: "+1 from me as well"
@grahamc: "IMO its up to the RMs"
So that makes +1 from @samueldr, 0 from @lheckemann, 0 from @edolstra
and +1 from @Infinisil (even though he's not a release manager) and no
opposition from anyone, which is the reason why I'm merging this right
now.
I also would like to thank @Infinisil, @edolstra and @danbst for their
reviews.
[1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/57519#issuecomment-477322127
[2]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/57519#issuecomment-477548395
To build the manual, you need Nix installed on your system (no need
for NixOS). To install Nix, follow the instructions at
https://nixos.org/nix/download.html
When you have Nix on your system, in the root directory of the project
(i.e., `nixpkgs`), run:
nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manual.x86_64-linux
When this command successfully finishes, it will tell you where the
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