nixos-with-flakes/other-useful-tips

[giscus[bot]]

nixos-with-flakes/other-useful-tips

An unofficial and opinionated book for beginners

https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/nixos-with-flakes/other-useful-tips

[maribox]

Is it really a good idea to let all system settings be changed with user-level privileges?

[ryan4yin]

Remember the frequently used command sudo nixos-rebuild switch earlier in this book? These changes must be deployed in privileged mode to take effect, and you can always check what has been changed via git before deploying your nixos config.

[maribox]

Yeah but these changes could also be tampered with if a program has user-level access, right? And even if we can see all changes since the last build correctly, the user might forget to check git before rebuilding... Would it be a valid alternative to just run git on the actual folder with root privileges?

[ryan4yin]

I think this is more insecure, because you usually want to use tools such as Neovim/VSCode to help write nix code, do code formatting, syntax checking, error prompts, etc., then you have to give these editors and all their plug-ins root permission, which is obviously riskier.

[maribox]

Understandable, thanks!

[vaibd]

What about hardware-configuration.nix file? In the file itself it says may be overwritten. So, is it okay to sym link it?