Certain persisted directories are owned by root instead of my user using the NixOS module

[robbins]

I used to have my files in ~ persisted using the Home Manager module, but I wanted to switch to the NixOS module. However, when I persist any directories in .config, .local, or .cache, the parent directories of the persisted directory is owned by root/root.

Example (some conditionally included files in the non-user section were excluded):

  environment.persistence."/persist" = {
      hideMounts = true;
      files = [
        { file = "/etc/machine-id"; parentDirectory = { user = "root"; group = "root"; }; }
      users."${specialArgs.username}" = {
        files = [
          ".config/gh/hosts.yml"
    ];
        directories = [
          ".local/share/backgrounds"
          "downloads"
          "pictures"
          "music"
          "videos"
          ".icons"
          ".minecraft"
          ".ssh"
          ".android"
     ".gradle"
     ".themes"
    ];
      };
    };

drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 60 Sep 9 14:27 .local drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 60 Sep 9 14:27 share drwxr-xr-x 2 nate users 118 Aug 5 13:24 backgrounds

This doesn't happen when persisting other directories. eg ~/.themes is owned by my_username users. These same persistent directories worked fine when using the HM module.

My persistent directory /persist is a ZFS dataset, and the ownership on /persist all the way down to /persist/home/my_username/.local/share/backgrounds is my_username users.

It seems to be the same issue as https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence/issues/74.

Impeprmanence version: e3a7acd113903269a1b5c8b527e84ce7ee859851 (Latest commit) NixOS version: 0bffda19b8af722f8069d09d8b6a24594c80b352 (Latest NixOS unstable commit) journalctl -b output with debugging enabled: https://katb.in/fexoyefeqif

[talyz]

Do you mount /home or any of its children separately? This was the issue in #74.

[robbins]

All I have is

  fileSystems."/home/my_username" =
    {
      device = "none";
      fsType = "tmpfs"; 
      options = [ "defaults" "size=500M" "mode=755" ];
    };

[talyz]

Okay, then that's the issue. If you need to mount the home directory separately, it must be marked as neededForBoot.

[robbins]

Thanks, re-reading #74, it makes sense.

neededForBoot = true solved the problem.