Installing on MacOS fails when user UID is already in use

[johncoder]

While installing nix on MacOS it fails while creating build user 5:

~~> Setting up the build user nixbld5
<main> attribute status: eDSRecordAlreadyExists
<dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14135 (eDSRecordAlreadyExists)

---- oh no! --------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeeze, something went wrong. If you can take all the output and open
an issue, we'd love to fix the problem so nobody else has this issue.

:(

We'd love to help if you need it.

If you can, open an issue....

After some investigation, I realized it fails because I have a _sophos user with UniqueID "30005"

dscl . -search /Users UniqueID "30005"

yields:

_sophos		UniqueID = (
	30005
)

Is there a way to work around this?

[matthewbauer]

This is definitely a serious issue! We may be able to just skip user id that is taken.

/cc @grahamc

[vcunat]

I'm not sure how to approach this. Having some non-nix UIDs in the nix block would seem sub-optimal to me as well; it would seem better to just choose a different contiguous block.

[stale]

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

[stale]

I closed this issue due to inactivity. → More info

[bjornfor]

Duplicate(?) issue still open here: #6153

[fbettag]

on macos sequoia the uid 301 is now being used by _modelmanagerd:

dscl . -search /Users UniqueID "301"                                                                                                                      ─╯
_modelmanagerd		UniqueID = (
    301
)

resulting in

---- sudo execution ------------------------------------------------------------
I am executing:

    $ sudo /usr/bin/dscl . create /Users/_nixbld1 UniqueID 301

Creating the Nix build user (#1), _nixbld1

<main> attribute status: eDSRecordAlreadyExists
<dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14135 (eDSRecordAlreadyExists)

[aarnphm]

on macos sequoia the uid 301 is now being used by _modelmanagerd:

dscl . -search /Users UniqueID "301"                                                                                                                      ─╯
_modelmanagerd		UniqueID = (
    301
)

resulting in

---- sudo execution ------------------------------------------------------------
I am executing:

    $ sudo /usr/bin/dscl . create /Users/_nixbld1 UniqueID 301

Creating the Nix build user (#1), _nixbld1

<main> attribute status: eDSRecordAlreadyExists
<dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14135 (eDSRecordAlreadyExists)

Hi there, just upgraded to sequoia to day, would recommend https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/nix-installer?tab=readme-ov-file and set the following

NIX_INSTALLER_NIX_BUILD_USER_ID_BASE=400 curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- install

Though I do think build user id should just start at 400 since Apple might add new build users in the future