Restructuring the Nix manual

doc/manual/installation/multi-user.xml

@@ -0,0 +1,106 @@
+<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
+      xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
+      xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
+      version="5.0"
+      xml:id="ssec-multi-user">
+
+<title>Multi-User Mode</title>
+
+<para>To allow a Nix store to be shared safely among multiple users,
+it is important that users are not able to run builders that modify
+the Nix store or database in arbitrary ways, or that interfere with
+builds started by other users.  If they could do so, they could
+install a Trojan horse in some package and compromise the accounts of
+other users.</para>
+
+<para>To prevent this, the Nix store and database are owned by some
+privileged user (usually <literal>root</literal>) and builders are
+executed under special user accounts (usually named
+<literal>nixbld1</literal>, <literal>nixbld2</literal>, etc.).  When a
+unprivileged user runs a Nix command, actions that operate on the Nix
+store (such as builds) are forwarded to a <emphasis>Nix
+daemon</emphasis> running under the owner of the Nix store/database
+that performs the operation.</para>
+
+<note>Multi-user mode has one important limitation: only
+<systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> can run <command
+linkend="sec-nix-pull">nix-pull</command> to register the availability
+of pre-built binaries.  However, those registrations are shared by all
+users, so they still get the benefit from <command>nix-pull</command>s
+done by <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem>.</note>
+
+
+<simplesect>
+
+<title>Setting up the build users</title>
+
+<para>The <emphasis>build users</emphasis> are the special UIDs under
+which builds are performed.  They should all be members of the
+<emphasis>build users group</emphasis> <literal>nixbld</literal>.
+This group should have no other members.  The build users should not
+be members of any other group. On Linux, you can create the group and
+users as follows:
+
+<screen>
+$ groupadd -r nixbld
+$ for n in $(seq 1 10); do useradd -c "Nix build user $n" \
+    -d /var/empty -g nixbld -G nixbld -M -N -r -s "$(which nologin)" \
+    nixbld$n; done
+</screen>
+
+This creates 10 build users. There can never be more concurrent builds
+than the number of build users, so you may want to increase this if
+you expect to do many builds at the same time.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect>
+
+<title>Running the daemon</title>
+
+<para>The <link linkend="sec-nix-daemon">Nix daemon</link> should be
+started as follows (as <literal>root</literal>):
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-daemon</screen>
+
+You’ll want to put that line somewhere in your system’s boot
+scripts.</para>
+
+<para>To let unprivileged users use the daemon, they should set the
+<link linkend="envar-remote"><envar>NIX_REMOTE</envar> environment
+variable</link> to <literal>daemon</literal>.  So you should put a
+line like
+
+<programlisting>
+export NIX_REMOTE=daemon</programlisting>
+
+into the users’ login scripts.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+<simplesect>
+
+<title>Restricting access</title>
+
+<para>To limit which users can perform Nix operations, you can use the
+permissions on the directory
+<filename>/nix/var/nix/daemon-socket</filename>.  For instance, if you
+want to restrict the use of Nix to the members of a group called
+<literal>nix-users</literal>, do
+
+<screen>
+$ chgrp nix-users /nix/var/nix/daemon-socket
+$ chmod ug=rwx,o= /nix/var/nix/daemon-socket
+</screen>
+
+This way, users who are not in the <literal>nix-users</literal> group
+cannot connect to the Unix domain socket
+<filename>/nix/var/nix/daemon-socket/socket</filename>, so they cannot
+perform Nix operations.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+</section>