SSH substituter with nologin as shell should not result in serialized integer error

[msteen]

Issue description

When the user of the SSH connection used by the SSH substituter does not have a shell configured it defaults to nologin, which causes the following error:

error: serialised integer 7161674624452356180 is too large for type 'j'

Which actually is the decimal representation of the first few letters of the following error reported by nologin (thanks @cleverca22 for figuring that out).

This account is currently not available.

Since with the release of Nix 2.0 it has become easy to setup a SSH substituter, so I expect that more people might run into this problem. I know of at least another that reported it on the IRC.

Instead of the serialized integer error it should just have reported the actual error, or at least it should have given a more specific error about the response being bogus.

Steps to reproduce

Forget to set users.users.<name>.shell for the user of the SSH substituter connection.

Technical details

• system: "x86_64-linux"
• host os: Linux 4.4.116, NixOS, 17.09.git.4daffb9 (Hummingbird)
• multi-user?: yes
• sandbox: yes
• version: nix-env (Nix) 2.0 (from nixos-unstable around 5 Mar)
• channels(root): ""
• channels(matthijs): ""
• nixpkgs: /wheel/fork/nixpkgs (nixos-17.09 around 22 Feb)

[MMesch]

I added some debug echo messages to my profile scripts and I got this error as well (with a different number). To fix it, I had to remove any output from the profiles ...

[tmplt]

Just stumbled into this too. I figured

user.users.builder = {
  isNormalUser = false;
  openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = [ builderSshKey ];
};

should be enough on the server part, but alas.

[stale]

Thank you for your contributions.
This has been automatically marked as stale because it has had no activity for 180 days.
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[ajs124]

I'm >90% sure this issue is still valid.

[tartavull]

It is.

[Michcioperz]

It is.

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[ajs124]

Probably still

[edolstra]

Made NixOS/nix#5290 to show a better error message. But I feel that nologin should print its message to stderr instead of stdout...

[zoechi]

I just run into this error running nixos-rebuild --target-host --flake .#my-host ...

[madorian]

BASHY $ NIX_SSHOPTS="-o RequestTTY=force" nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#pi --target-host b0ef@10.0.0.68 --use-remote-sudo
warning: Git tree '/home/b0ef/repoman/2024-01-31.raspberrypi-nixos-example' is dirty
building the system configuration...
warning: Git tree '/home/b0ef/repoman/2024-01-31.raspberrypi-nixos-example' is dirty
(b0ef@10.0.0.68) Password:
copying 75 paths...
copying path '/nix/store/293hh61g82rgh4kvbv6x11bqqyaw55z5-binutils-2.40-lib' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/4ii7naj8bpfgc1y2lb79n822rpq9k6mb-firmware' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/5q208sbq6yydhmw8c0d7vm4kbsz0qf1k-graphite2-1.3.14' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/5c1lcvrw9f80wasrhsy7gvkrc6sr3d0j-local-cmds' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/559m992nchr7fl3i2zl67x55f71i55d6-gpm-unstable-2020-06-17' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/7xryf3yccz1i8yilw0cqicps2bxg4qcs-jansson-2.14' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/4ibrwiykc3jj2hgybnzaj3wpj067xxdm-libXi-1.8.1' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/5aa75npm01xjz7q9f14fndlwjmfy0hdc-ncompress-5.0' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/8d108bf94fj6b8j5v7hmly85pg7sj06x-duf-0.8.1' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/6cp9jdrnp0wsm2lxwxvy2lhmz1q9fvlz-libXfixes-6.0.1' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/9f39063n8x7qh97zcnn4206x1b623li6-fribidi-1.0.13' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/5vv4bsbcj4kdkvm9vsd8zx9jr6b0zsf6-libdatrie-2019-12-20-lib' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/686qkd0gmdnyl135m5xqsnh3848l3iin-giflib-5.2.1' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/clrj3m1kaackha4vnd28qb422xhmhp32-unit-systemd-makefs-.service' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/dlj8hm1vvpwimfaj1kj4kyqy4q77a4m1-gmp-6.3.0' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/fhkj0ywv8yp85b0qn685mm92wzlfrsrm-etc-sysctl.d-60-nixos.conf' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/fnqh1d823qg717xgxgnjni446pphq8iy-unit-systemd-fsck-.service' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/jrlbs24v34hprn9vpdkj4gnw085abdgm-libjpeg-turbo-2.1.5.1' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/cdq6hvignl3ran4dcb23b6afd86y8mx7-pcre-8.45' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/k5wz1hziijwg8rlyr766i3r8j8mp752b-isl-0.20' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/mgqkdf660x631bbidbqsyzl0c4bfynn3-m17n-db-1.8.5' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/fyfb9maxywiayqj64sxl348wr28f664x-libXrender-0.9.11' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/kcb03rg3mgcyvqdkhw0s6q30sbkyy8ap-linux-6.6.6-modules-shrunk' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
~& escape not available to multiplexed sessions
copying path '/nix/store/ilslhysr9dpqgjwd31iynmgs68x86xci-libxcb-1.16-dev' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
error (ignored): error: interrupted by the user
copying path '/nix/store/n76g3qn71c569h9l47mqm083lcmf2xsl-binutils-2.40' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/k7379ivzxg4m94vg43cj1yvzk2mjvcbj-expand-response-params' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
error (ignored): error: interrupted by the user
copying path '/nix/store/p9yqa7sh093rndj4yq7ch0c557ad1ha5-etc-fstab' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
copying path '/nix/store/nz212fm1gxpchr6spx73h2wap8casqhz-libXpm-3.5.17' to 'ssh://b0ef@10.0.0.68'...
error: serialised integer 7577342048918991461 is too large for type 'j'

[nixos-discourse]

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

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/how-can-i-nixos-rebuild-on-the-pi-without-getting-the-error-serialized-integer-is-too-large-for-type/39108/2