Nixpkgs: How can I fix a corrupt manifest.nix?

[Ptival]

Issue description

I'm really not sure when or what happened, but suddenly my nix-env is unusable!

nix-env -q
error: syntax error, unexpected $end, at /nix/store/0722zxv7zijaljpkrx342rjyjf56k979-env-manifest.nix:1:1

I couldn't find anything to fix it! I tried:

sudo nix-store --verify --repair --check-contents
reading the Nix store...
checking path existence...
checking hashes...
path ‘/nix/store/0722zxv7zijaljpkrx342rjyjf56k979-env-manifest.nix’ was modified! expected hash ‘632ec35215ef2d5e7adc4698e87db5ee331c21633f5a4a351e10a7e249c6dd00’, got ‘77ac62e2629d8e45f624589c0c8bf99e24b3a722349bf1e79bc186008534e246’
error: cannot repair path ‘/nix/store/0722zxv7zijaljpkrx342rjyjf56k979-env-manifest.nix’

I tried to ask on IRC or search the chat logs but couldn't really find any help anywhere. Is anyone knowledgeable enough to fix this kind of issue!?

[cleverca22]

can you pastebin the contents of the manifest.nix?

[Ptival]

It's empty.

On Sun, Sep 4, 2016, 04:16 cleverca22 [email protected] wrote:

can you pastebin the contents of the manifest.nix?

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[cleverca22]

ah, then your only option is nix-env --rollback to switch to the previous version

[Ptival]

It says no environment older than the current one exists... :(

[Ptival]

To anyone this happens to (corrupt profile + garbage-collected other profiles), you can delete your corrupt profile. First you might want to remember what was installed:

nix-store -q --references ~/.nix-profile

Then wipe the corrupted profiles out:

sudo rm /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/yourname/profile
sudo rm /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/yourname/profile-*-link

Then start again from scratch.

Thanks to clever and vcunat for helping me!

[jonringer]

This was helpful in diagnosing my issue:

# any nix-env command, including the one ran by home-manager
error: syntax error, unexpected $end, at /nix/store/ry2b0qwvhdvdlmrrkawj9c6xiy9d6krs-env-manifest.nix:1:1

For home-manager users, see what is populating your profile:

nix-store -q --references ~/.nix-profile

look for home-manager-path, mine was:

/nix/store/ghj6r1157710pdw113rmfg1nj46f0f7s-home-manager-path

To remove the broken manifest:

$ sudo rm -r /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/user/profile-*-link

then I could run home-manager again (using the path from earlier):

/nix/store/ghj6r1157710pdw113rmfg1nj46f0f7s-home-manager-path/bin/home-manager switch

Everything works as intended now

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/home-manager-stopped-working-on-my-non-nixos/6023/15

[srid]

sudo rm -r /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/user/profile-*-link

Be careful of doing this if you use home-manager via configuration.nix; it will break your shell, and there is no home-manager-path/bin/home-manager.