problems with the nixos manifest

6 jun 2012

what is this?

lately nix-channel stopped working with this error message:

# nix-channel --update
fetching list of Nix archives at `http://nixos.org/releases/nixos/channels/nixos-unstable/MANIFEST.bz2'...
 % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
 Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 421 100 421 0 0 5212 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 10023
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0
caching /nix/store/2n6ifd0gyw3cg4v780yxdl307sfi4mmv-MANIFEST.bz2...
bzip2: (stdin) is not a bzip2 file.
you have an old-style or corrupt manifest `/nix/var/nix/manifests/nixos-unstable nixos-d8b23fa7b687df69ca99c50a659cb9b7.nixmanifest'; please delete it at /nix/store/gq4mqkg155jbpdzs44s6nc6ys1q3aqmh-nix-1.0pre2614_005d1e4/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.14.2/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/Nix/Manifest.pm line 346.
cannot pull cache manifest from `http://nixos.org/releases/nixos/channels/nixos-unstable' at /var/run/current-system/sw/bin/nix-channel line 88.

the fix

# ls -la /nix/var/nix/manifests/

total 28
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 6 20:19 ./
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Jun 4 12:36 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jun 6 19:44 cache.lock
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10240 Jun 6 19:44 cache.sqlite
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jun 6 20:19 cache.sqlite-journal
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 56 Jun 6 20:19 nixos-unstable-1b76fe40b585f44b15266540562d24b5.nixmanifest -> /nix/store/xrl4xmx6jz3zvcqwfy3k2qfycdh2454n-MANIFEST.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 64 Jun 6 20:19 nixos-unstable-1b76fe40b585f44b15266540562d24b5.url
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 56 Jun 6 19:44 nixos-unstable\ nixos-d8b23fa7b687df69ca99c50a659cb9b7.nixmanifest -> /nix/store/2n6ifd0gyw3cg4v780yxdl307sfi4mmv-MANIFEST.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 70 Jun 6 19:44 nixos-unstable\ nixos-d8b23fa7b687df69ca99c50a659cb9b7.url

first, remove all the manifests

# rm /nix/var/nix/manifests/*

then we can remove the store entry:

# nix-store --delete /nix/store/xrl4xmx6jz3zvcqwfy3k2qfycdh2454n-MANIFEST.bz2 1 888 3 pts/17 /nix/var/nix/manifests root@eliteBook-8530w 12-06-06 21:35:59
finding garbage collector roots...
removing stale link from `/nix/var/nix/gcroots/auto/v6aa8ai44dd10ypv8vg6shf8b5mzkhfn' to `/nix/var/nix/gcroots/per-user/root/channels.tmp'
deleting `/nix/store/xrl4xmx6jz3zvcqwfy3k2qfycdh2454n-MANIFEST.bz2'
1 store paths deleted, 6557759 bytes (6.25 MiB, 12840 blocks) freed

afterwards nix-channel –update works

# nix-channel --update
fetching list of Nix archives at `http://nixos.org/releases/nixos/channels/nixos-unstable/MANIFEST.bz2'...
 % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
 Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 421 100 421 0 0 5191 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 10023
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0
cached contents of ‘http://nixos.org/releases/nixos/channels/nixos-unstable/MANIFEST.bz2’ disappeared, redownloading...
 % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
 Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 421 100 421 0 0 5221 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 10268
100 6404k 100 6404k 0 0 1499k 0 0:00:04 0:00:04 --:--:-- 1705k
caching /nix/store/xrl4xmx6jz3zvcqwfy3k2qfycdh2454n-MANIFEST.bz2...
downloading Nix expressions from `http://nixos.org/releases/nixos/channels/nixos-unstable/nixexprs.tar.bz2'...
 % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
 Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 425 100 425 0 0 5417 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 10365
100 3701k 100 3701k 0 0 1404k 0 0:00:02 0:00:02 --:--:-- 1627k
unpacking channel Nix expressions...
these derivations will be built:
 /nix/store/4yd4l79h2nifm56rjpxq7hx10q57yz48-channels.drv
building path(s) `/nix/store/r3i2m2by6hcsa3ic99nyhjdb7p551izl-channels'
unpacking channel nixos-unstable

summary

i don’t know why it stopped working. maybe i did checkout the wrong channel by mistake? but maybe someone else might find himself in the same situation and this posting might help to get things going quickly.

thanks to niksnut@freenode#nixos

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