Issue with installer script touch: /etc/bashrc: No such file or directory

[brettmilford]

Platform

• Linux:
• macOS Ventura 13.1
• WSL

Additional information

Am attempting to reinstall nix after having removed it including the APFS volume.

Using the command:

curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh -s -- --daemon

I encounter 2 issues.

1. the diff command provided errors
2. the script exits after it can't stat /etc/bashrc

Output

Output

~~> Fixing any leftover Nix volume state
...
Nix isn't the only thing in /var/folders/87/pz89xbz16pdc5h_7ldfysrv80000gn/T/tmp.7DEypl98/synthetic.conf.edit,
but I think I know how to edit it out.
Here's the diff:
diff: unrecognized option `--unchanged-group-format=\033[2m%=\033[0m'
usage: diff [-aBbdilpTtw] [-c | -e | -f | -n | -q | -u] [--ignore-case]
            [--no-ignore-case] [--normal] [--strip-trailing-cr] [--tabsize]
            [-I pattern] [-F pattern] [-L label] file1 file2
       diff [-aBbdilpTtw] [-I pattern] [-L label] [--ignore-case]
            [--no-ignore-case] [--normal] [--strip-trailing-cr] [--tabsize]
            [-F pattern] -C number file1 file2
       diff [-aBbdiltw] [-I pattern] [--ignore-case] [--no-ignore-case]
            [--normal] [--strip-trailing-cr] [--tabsize] -D string file1 file2
       diff [-aBbdilpTtw] [-I pattern] [-L label] [--ignore-case]
            [--no-ignore-case] [--normal] [--tabsize] [--strip-trailing-cr]
            [-F pattern] -U number file1 file2
       diff [-aBbdilNPprsTtw] [-c | -e | -f | -n | -q | -u] [--ignore-case]
            [--no-ignore-case] [--normal] [--tabsize] [-I pattern] [-L label]
            [-F pattern] [-S name] [-X file] [-x pattern] dir1 dir2
       diff [-aBbditwW] [--expand-tabs] [--ignore-all-blanks]
            [--ignore-blank-lines] [--ignore-case] [--minimal]
            [--no-ignore-file-name-case] [--strip-trailing-cr]
            [--suppress-common-lines] [--tabsize] [--text] [--width]
            -y | --side-by-side file1 file2
       diff [--help] [--version]

...

~~> Setting up shell profiles: /etc/bashrc /etc/profile.d/nix.sh /etc/zshrc /etc/bash.bashrc /etc/zsh/zshrc
touch: /etc/bashrc: No such file or directory

---- oh no! ------------------------------------------------------------------
...

[brettmilford]

Issue seems a little more complex than just a missing file:

thamrys% ls -alh /etc/{bash,zsh}rc
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    18B 23 Feb 21:52 /etc/bashrc -> /etc/static/bashrc
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    17B 23 Feb 21:52 /etc/zshrc -> /etc/static/zshrc
thamrys% touch /etc/{bash,zsh}rc
touch: /etc/bashrc: No such file or directory
touch: /etc/zshrc: No such file or directory

[abathur]

It sounds like you may have had nix-darwin (or maybe home-manager) installed at some point and linked the files to the copies that it would generate (which it links in to /etc/static, iirc). I don't think this is the normal way to do it, but my install is a little old by this point. I know my /etc/bashrc just has a statement at the top like if test -e /etc/static/bashrc; then . /etc/static/bashrc; fi to accomplish more or less the same thing.

Unclear whether you followed the full uninstall instructions https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/installation/installing-binary.html#macos, so I'd start by following those and try installing again.

[abathur]

Ah. Sorry. I cheated and just read the 2nd comment.

The diff issue in the original output is the same one reported in #7286. TL;DR: in Ventura, Apple's replaced GNU diff with their own home-grown version that now lacks some flags that the installer would use to show you a diff of the edit it's trying to make if it looks like there's something other than Nix in your /etc/synthetic.conf.

The ~cheapest workarounds are probably to:

1. use brew install diffutils to temporarily install GNU diff; can uninstall it after getting Nix installed
2. temporarily remove whatever non-nix item is in /etc/synthetic.conf and replace it after the installer runs (this should just avoid the code path that uses the now-unsupported flag)