Invalid cross-device link

[michaelmesser]

> mkdir -m 0755 ~/private/.nix
> ./private/nix-user-chroot ~/private/.nix bash -c "curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | bash"
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100  2490  100  2490    0     0  11690      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 11690
downloading Nix 2.3.7 binary tarball for x86_64-linux from 'https://releases.nixos.org/nix/nix-2.3.7/nix-2.3.7-x86_64-linux.tar.xz' to '/tmp/nix-binary-tarball-unpack.qU8sjaLWPz'...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 16.4M  100 16.4M    0     0  8935k      0  0:00:01  0:00:01 --:--:-- 8930k
Note: a multi-user installation is possible. See https://nixos.org/nix/manual/#sect-multi-user-installation
performing a single-user installation of Nix...
copying Nix to /nix/store......................................
installing 'nix-2.3.7'
error: linking '/nix/store/b64sdzfcc4wd2p656i9jskxdmhjkq0cv-user-environment.drv.chroot/nix/store/p8ij3l24f23kzcmfk1qd5kyzr4rp54w8-env-manifest.nix' to '/nix/store/p8ij3l24f23kzcmfk1qd5kyzr4rp54w8-env-manifest.nix': Invalid cross-device link

I'm not sure what /nix/store/b64sdzfcc4wd2p656i9jskxdmhjkq0cv-user-environment.drv.chroot/ is because it does not appear to exist

[Mic92]

I think it is this here:

https://github.com/NixOS/nix/blob/8a945d6ddb0676b454458e6fe0e9ea6f8b4b5659/src/nix-env/buildenv.nix#L6

[michaelmesser]

@Mic92 Is it supposed to be a directory?

[Mic92]

@Mic92 Is it supposed to be a directory?

It is created by nix during the build I think.

[michaelmesser]

The solution was to disable sandboxing by writing sandbox = false to /nix/etc/nix/nix.conf before installing nix

[Mic92]

Ok. Maybe we should mention that in our installation guide:

export NIX_CONF_DIR=some-alternative-dir

should also work to provide a different configuration during installation.

[KornelJahn]

This error also occurs during NixOS installation, when a script created using pkgs.writeShellApplication fails the shellcheck step. See MWE here.

[Mikilio]

The same error occurred for me when installing NixOS with configuration for kmonad NixOSmodule. It seemed to have an issue linking my .kbd file. So it's not only the SpellCheck that causes this.

[KornelJahn]

The same error occurred for me when installing NixOS with configuration for kmonad NixOSmodule. It seemed to have an issue linking my .kbd file. So it's not only the SpellCheck that causes this.

You are right, I've also experienced it occasionally with other packages during NixOS installation. It seems that this "Invalid cross-device link" error usually masks the root cause, which can, however, be found out when only building the system config via
nix build <flake-path>#nixosConfigurations.<hostname>.config.system.build.toplevel
(when using Flakes and the new Nix command).