Provided by: nix-bin_2.18.1+dfsg-1ubuntu5_amd64 
Name
nix.conf - Nix configuration file
Description
Nix supports a variety of configuration settings, which are read from configuration files or taken as
command line flags.
Configuration file
By default Nix reads settings from the following places, in that order:
1. The system-wide configuration file sysconfdir/nix/nix.conf (i.e. /etc/nix/nix.conf on most systems),
or $NIX_CONF_DIR/nix.conf if NIX_CONF_DIR is set.
Values loaded in this file are not forwarded to the Nix daemon. The client assumes that the daemon
has already loaded them.
2. If NIX_USER_CONF_FILES is set, then each path separated by : will be loaded in reverse order.
Otherwise it will look for nix/nix.conf files in XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and XDG_CONFIG_HOME. If unset,
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS defaults to /etc/xdg, and XDG_CONFIG_HOME defaults to $HOME/.config as per XDG Base
Directory Specification.
3. If NIX_CONFIG is set, its contents are treated as the contents of a configuration file.
File format
Configuration files consist of name = value pairs, one per line. Comments start with a # character.
Example:
keep-outputs = true # Nice for developers
keep-derivations = true # Idem
Other files can be included with a line like include <path>, where <path> is interpreted relative to the
current configuration file. A missing file is an error unless !include is used instead.
A configuration setting usually overrides any previous value. However, for settings that take a list of
items, you can prefix the name of the setting by extra- to append to the previous value.
For instance,
substituters = a b
extra-substituters = c d
defines the substituters setting to be a b c d.
Unknown option names are not an error, and are simply ignored with a warning.
Command line flags
Configuration options can be set on the command line, overriding the values set in the configuration
file:
• Every configuration setting has corresponding command line flag (e.g. --max-jobs 16). Boolean
settings do not need an argument, and can be explicitly disabled with the no- prefix (e.g. --keep-
failed and --no-keep-failed).
Unknown option names are invalid flags (unless there is already a flag with that name), and are
rejected with an error.
• The flag --option <name> <value> is interpreted exactly like a <name> = <value> in a setting file.
Unknown option names are ignored with a warning.
The extra- prefix is supported for settings that take a list of items (e.g. --extra-trusted users alice
or --option extra-trusted-users alice).
Available settings
• accept-flake-config
Whether to accept nix configuration from a flake without prompting.
Warning This setting is part of an experimental feature.
To change this setting, you need to make sure the corresponding experimental feature, flakes, is
enabled. For example, include the following in nix.conf:
extra-experimental-features = flakes
accept-flake-config = ...
Default: false
• access-tokens
Access tokens used to access protected GitHub, GitLab, or other locations requiring token-based
authentication.
Access tokens are specified as a string made up of space-separated host=token values. The specific
token used is selected by matching the host portion against the “host” specification of the input. The
actual use of the token value is determined by the type of resource being accessed:
• Github: the token value is the OAUTH-TOKEN string obtained as the Personal Access Token from the
Github server (see https://docs.github.com/en/developers/apps/building-oauth-apps/authorizing-
oauth-apps).
• Gitlab: the token value is either the OAuth2 token or the Personal Access Token (these are
different types tokens for gitlab, see
https://docs.gitlab.com/12.10/ee/api/README.html#authentication). The token value should be
type:tokenstring where type is either OAuth2 or PAT to indicate which type of token is being
specified.
Example ~/.config/nix/nix.conf:
access-tokens = github.com=23ac...b289 gitlab.mycompany.com=PAT:A123Bp_Cd..EfG gitlab.com=OAuth2:1jklw3jk
Example ~/code/flake.nix:
input.foo = {
type = "gitlab";
host = "gitlab.mycompany.com";
owner = "mycompany";
repo = "pro";
};
This example specifies three tokens, one each for accessing github.com, gitlab.mycompany.com, and
gitlab.com.
The input.foo uses the “gitlab” fetcher, which might requires specifying the token type along with
the token value.
Default: empty
• allow-dirty
Whether to allow dirty Git/Mercurial trees.
Default: true
• allow-import-from-derivation
By default, Nix allows you to import from a derivation, allowing building at evaluation time. With
this option set to false, Nix will throw an error when evaluating an expression that uses this
feature, allowing users to ensure their evaluation will not require any builds to take place.
Default: true
• allow-new-privileges
(Linux-specific.) By default, builders on Linux cannot acquire new privileges by calling setuid/setgid
programs or programs that have file capabilities. For example, programs such as sudo or ping will
fail. (Note that in sandbox builds, no such programs are available unless you bind-mount them into the
sandbox via the sandbox-paths option.) You can allow the use of such programs by enabling this option.
This is impure and usually undesirable, but may be useful in certain scenarios (e.g. to spin up
containers or set up userspace network interfaces in tests).
Default: false
• allow-symlinked-store
If set to true, Nix will stop complaining if the store directory (typically /nix/store) contains
symlink components.
This risks making some builds “impure” because builders sometimes “canonicalise” paths by resolving
all symlink components. Problems occur if those builds are then deployed to machines where /nix/store
resolves to a different location from that of the build machine. You can enable this setting if you
are sure you’re not going to do that.
Default: false
• allow-unsafe-native-code-during-evaluation
Whether builtin functions that allow executing native code should be enabled.
Default: false
• allowed-impure-host-deps
Which prefixes to allow derivations to ask for access to (primarily for Darwin).
Default: empty
• allowed-uris
A list of URI prefixes to which access is allowed in restricted evaluation mode. For example, when set
to https://github.com/NixOS, builtin functions such as fetchGit are allowed to access
https://github.com/NixOS/patchelf.git.
Default: empty
• allowed-users
A list user names, separated by whitespace. These users are allowed to connect to the Nix daemon.
You can specify groups by prefixing names with @. For instance, @wheel means all users in the wheel
group. Also, you can allow all users by specifying *.
Note
Trusted users (set in trusted-users) can always connect to the Nix daemon.
Default: *
• auto-allocate-uids
Whether to select UIDs for builds automatically, instead of using the users in build-users-group.
UIDs are allocated starting at 872415232 (0x34000000) on Linux and 56930 on macOS.
Default: false
• auto-optimise-store
If set to true, Nix automatically detects files in the store that have identical contents, and
replaces them with hard links to a single copy. This saves disk space. If set to false (the default),
you can still run nix-store --optimise to get rid of duplicate files.
Default: false
• bash-prompt
The bash prompt (PS1) in nix develop shells.
Default: empty
• bash-prompt-prefix
Prefix prepended to the PS1 environment variable in nix develop shells.
Default: empty
• bash-prompt-suffix
Suffix appended to the PS1 environment variable in nix develop shells.
Default: empty
• build-hook
The path to the helper program that executes remote builds.
Nix communicates with the build hook over stdio using a custom protocol to request builds that cannot
be performed directly by the Nix daemon. The default value is the internal Nix binary that implements
remote building.
Important
Change this setting only if you really know what you’re doing.
Default: empty
• build-poll-interval
How often (in seconds) to poll for locks.
Default: 5
• build-users-group
This options specifies the Unix group containing the Nix build user accounts. In multi-user Nix
installations, builds should not be performed by the Nix account since that would allow users to
arbitrarily modify the Nix store and database by supplying specially crafted builders; and they cannot
be performed by the calling user since that would allow him/her to influence the build result.
Therefore, if this option is non-empty and specifies a valid group, builds will be performed under the
user accounts that are a member of the group specified here (as listed in /etc/group). Those user
accounts should not be used for any other purpose!
Nix will never run two builds under the same user account at the same time. This is to prevent an
obvious security hole: a malicious user writing a Nix expression that modifies the build result of a
legitimate Nix expression being built by another user. Therefore it is good to have as many Nix build
user accounts as you can spare. (Remember: uids are cheap.)
The build users should have permission to create files in the Nix store, but not delete them.
Therefore, /nix/store should be owned by the Nix account, its group should be the group specified
here, and its mode should be 1775.
If the build users group is empty, builds will be performed under the uid of the Nix process (that is,
the uid of the caller if NIX_REMOTE is empty, the uid under which the Nix daemon runs if NIX_REMOTE is
daemon). Obviously, this should not be used with a nix daemon accessible to untrusted clients.
Defaults to nixbld when running as root, empty otherwise.
Default: machine-specific
• builders
A semicolon-separated list of build machines. For the exact format and examples, see the manual
chapter on remote builds
Default: @/dummy/machines
• builders-use-substitutes
If set to true, Nix will instruct remote build machines to use their own binary substitutes if
available. In practical terms, this means that remote hosts will fetch as many build dependencies as
possible from their own substitutes (e.g, from cache.nixos.org), instead of waiting for this host to
upload them all. This can drastically reduce build times if the network connection between this
computer and the remote build host is slow.
Default: false
• commit-lockfile-summary
The commit summary to use when committing changed flake lock files. If empty, the summary is generated
based on the action performed.
Warning This setting is part of an experimental feature.
To change this setting, you need to make sure the corresponding experimental feature, flakes, is
enabled. For example, include the following in nix.conf:
extra-experimental-features = flakes
commit-lockfile-summary = ...
Default: empty
• compress-build-log
If set to true (the default), build logs written to /nix/var/log/nix/drvs will be compressed on the
fly using bzip2. Otherwise, they will not be compressed.
Default: true
Deprecated alias: build-compress-log
• connect-timeout
The timeout (in seconds) for establishing connections in the binary cache substituter. It corresponds
to curl’s --connect-timeout option. A value of 0 means no limit.
Default: 0
• cores
Sets the value of the NIX_BUILD_CORES environment variable in the invocation of builders. Builders can
use this variable at their discretion to control the maximum amount of parallelism. For instance, in
Nixpkgs, if the derivation attribute enableParallelBuilding is set to true, the builder passes the -jN
flag to GNU Make. It can be overridden using the --cores command line switch and defaults to 1. The
value 0 means that the builder should use all available CPU cores in the system.
Default: machine-specific
Deprecated alias: build-cores
• diff-hook
Absolute path to an executable capable of diffing build results. The hook is executed if run-diff-hook
is true, and the output of a build is known to not be the same. This program is not executed to
determine if two results are the same.
The diff hook is executed by the same user and group who ran the build. However, the diff hook does
not have write access to the store path just built.
The diff hook program receives three parameters:
1. A path to the previous build’s results
2. A path to the current build’s results
3. The path to the build’s derivation
4. The path to the build’s scratch directory. This directory will exist only if the build was run with
--keep-failed.
The stderr and stdout output from the diff hook will not be displayed to the user. Instead, it will
print to the nix-daemon’s log.
When using the Nix daemon, diff-hook must be set in the nix.conf configuration file, and cannot be
passed at the command line.
Default: ``
• download-attempts
How often Nix will attempt to download a file before giving up.
Default: 5
• download-speed
Specify the maximum transfer rate in kilobytes per second you want Nix to use for downloads.
Default: 0
• eval-cache
Whether to use the flake evaluation cache.
Default: true
• experimental-features
Experimental features that are enabled.
Example:
experimental-features = nix-command flakes
The following experimental features are available:
• auto-allocate-uids
• ca-derivations
• cgroups
• daemon-trust-override
• dynamic-derivations
• fetch-closure
• flakes
• impure-derivations
• nix-command
• no-url-literals
• parse-toml-timestamps
• read-only-local-store
• recursive-nix
• repl-flake
Experimental features are further documented in the manual.
Default: empty
• extra-platforms
System types of executables that can be run on this machine.
Nix will only build a given derivation locally when its system attribute equals any of the values
specified here or in the system option.
Setting this can be useful to build derivations locally on compatible machines:
• i686-linux executables can be run on x86_64-linux machines (set by default)
• x86_64-darwin executables can be run on macOS aarch64-darwin with Rosetta 2 (set by default where
applicable)
• armv6 and armv5tel executables can be run on armv7
• some aarch64 machines can also natively run 32-bit ARM code
• qemu-user may be used to support non-native platforms (though this may be slow and buggy)
Build systems will usually detect the target platform to be the current physical system and therefore
produce machine code incompatible with what may be intended in the derivation. You should design your
derivation’s builder accordingly and cross-check the results when using this option against natively-
built versions of your derivation.
Default: machine-specific
• fallback
If set to true, Nix will fall back to building from source if a binary substitute fails. This is
equivalent to the --fallback flag. The default is false.
Default: false
Deprecated alias: build-fallback
• filter-syscalls
Whether to prevent certain dangerous system calls, such as creation of setuid/setgid files or adding
ACLs or extended attributes. Only disable this if you’re aware of the security implications.
Default: true
• flake-registry
Path or URI of the global flake registry.
When empty, disables the global flake registry.
Warning This setting is part of an experimental feature.
To change this setting, you need to make sure the corresponding experimental feature, flakes, is
enabled. For example, include the following in nix.conf:
extra-experimental-features = flakes
flake-registry = ...
Default: https://channels.nixos.org/flake-registry.json
• fsync-metadata
If set to true, changes to the Nix store metadata (in /nix/var/nix/db) are synchronously flushed to
disk. This improves robustness in case of system crashes, but reduces performance. The default is
true.
Default: true
• gc-reserved-space
Amount of reserved disk space for the garbage collector.
Default: 8388608
• hashed-mirrors
A list of web servers used by builtins.fetchurl to obtain files by hash. Given a hash type ht and a
base-16 hash h, Nix will try to download the file from hashed-mirror/ht/h. This allows files to be
downloaded even if they have disappeared from their original URI. For example, given an example
mirror http://tarballs.nixos.org/, when building the derivation
builtins.fetchurl {
url = "https://example.org/foo-1.2.3.tar.xz";
sha256 = "2c26b46b68ffc68ff99b453c1d30413413422d706483bfa0f98a5e886266e7ae";
}
Nix will attempt to download this file from
http://tarballs.nixos.org/sha256/2c26b46b68ffc68ff99b453c1d30413413422d706483bfa0f98a5e886266e7ae
first. If it is not available there, if will try the original URI.
Default: empty
• http-connections
The maximum number of parallel TCP connections used to fetch files from binary caches and by other
downloads. It defaults to 25. 0 means no limit.
Default: 25
Deprecated alias: binary-caches-parallel-connections
• http2
Whether to enable HTTP/2 support.
Default: true
• id-count
The number of UIDs/GIDs to use for dynamic ID allocation.
Default: 8388608
• ignore-try
If set to true, ignore exceptions inside ‘tryEval’ calls when evaluating nix expressions in debug mode
(using the –debugger flag). By default the debugger will pause on all exceptions.
Default: false
• ignored-acls
A list of ACLs that should be ignored, normally Nix attempts to remove all ACLs from files and
directories in the Nix store, but some ACLs like security.selinux or system.nfs4_acl can’t be removed
even by root. Therefore it’s best to just ignore them.
Default: security.csm security.selinux system.nfs4_acl
• impersonate-linux-26
Whether to impersonate a Linux 2.6 machine on newer kernels.
Default: false
Deprecated alias: build-impersonate-linux-26
• keep-build-log
If set to true (the default), Nix will write the build log of a derivation (i.e. the standard output
and error of its builder) to the directory /nix/var/log/nix/drvs. The build log can be retrieved using
the command nix-store -l path.
Default: true
Deprecated alias: build-keep-log
• keep-derivations
If true (default), the garbage collector will keep the derivations from which non-garbage store paths
were built. If false, they will be deleted unless explicitly registered as a root (or reachable from
other roots).
Keeping derivation around is useful for querying and traceability (e.g., it allows you to ask with
what dependencies or options a store path was built), so by default this option is on. Turn it off to
save a bit of disk space (or a lot if keep-outputs is also turned on).
Default: true
Deprecated alias: gc-keep-derivations
• keep-env-derivations
If false (default), derivations are not stored in Nix user environments. That is, the derivations of
any build-time-only dependencies may be garbage-collected.
If true, when you add a Nix derivation to a user environment, the path of the derivation is stored in
the user environment. Thus, the derivation will not be garbage-collected until the user environment
generation is deleted (nix-env --delete-generations). To prevent build-time-only dependencies from
being collected, you should also turn on keep-outputs.
The difference between this option and keep-derivations is that this one is “sticky”: it applies to
any user environment created while this option was enabled, while keep-derivations only applies at the
moment the garbage collector is run.
Default: false
Deprecated alias: env-keep-derivations
• keep-failed
Whether to keep temporary directories of failed builds.
Default: false
• keep-going
Whether to keep building derivations when another build fails.
Default: false
• keep-outputs
If true, the garbage collector will keep the outputs of non-garbage derivations. If false (default),
outputs will be deleted unless they are GC roots themselves (or reachable from other roots).
In general, outputs must be registered as roots separately. However, even if the output of a
derivation is registered as a root, the collector will still delete store paths that are used only at
build time (e.g., the C compiler, or source tarballs downloaded from the network). To prevent it from
doing so, set this option to true.
Default: false
Deprecated alias: gc-keep-outputs
• log-lines
The number of lines of the tail of the log to show if a build fails.
Default: 10
• max-build-log-size
This option defines the maximum number of bytes that a builder can write to its stdout/stderr. If the
builder exceeds this limit, it’s killed. A value of 0 (the default) means that there is no limit.
Default: 0
Deprecated alias: build-max-log-size
• max-free
When a garbage collection is triggered by the min-free option, it stops as soon as max-free bytes are
available. The default is infinity (i.e. delete all garbage).
Default: -1
• max-jobs
This option defines the maximum number of jobs that Nix will try to build in parallel. The default is
1. The special value auto causes Nix to use the number of CPUs in your system. 0 is useful when using
remote builders to prevent any local builds (except for preferLocalBuild derivation attribute which
executes locally regardless). It can be overridden using the --max-jobs (-j) command line switch.
Default: 1
Deprecated alias: build-max-jobs
• max-silent-time
This option defines the maximum number of seconds that a builder can go without producing any data on
standard output or standard error. This is useful (for instance in an automated build system) to
catch builds that are stuck in an infinite loop, or to catch remote builds that are hanging due to
network problems. It can be overridden using the --max-silent-time command line switch.
The value 0 means that there is no timeout. This is also the default.
Default: 0
Deprecated alias: build-max-silent-time
• max-substitution-jobs
This option defines the maximum number of substitution jobs that Nix will try to run in parallel. The
default is 16. The minimum value one can choose is 1 and lower values will be interpreted as 1.
Default: 16
Deprecated alias: substitution-max-jobs
• min-free
When free disk space in /nix/store drops below min-free during a build, Nix performs a garbage-
collection until max-free bytes are available or there is no more garbage. A value of 0 (the default)
disables this feature.
Default: 0
• min-free-check-interval
Number of seconds between checking free disk space.
Default: 5
• nar-buffer-size
Maximum size of NARs before spilling them to disk.
Default: 33554432
• narinfo-cache-negative-ttl
The TTL in seconds for negative lookups. If a store path is queried from a substituter but was not
found, there will be a negative lookup cached in the local disk cache database for the specified
duration.
Default: 3600
• narinfo-cache-positive-ttl
The TTL in seconds for positive lookups. If a store path is queried from a substituter, the result of
the query will be cached in the local disk cache database including some of the NAR metadata. The
default TTL is a month, setting a shorter TTL for positive lookups can be useful for binary caches
that have frequent garbage collection, in which case having a more frequent cache invalidation would
prevent trying to pull the path again and failing with a hash mismatch if the build isn’t
reproducible.
Default: 2592000
• netrc-file
If set to an absolute path to a netrc file, Nix will use the HTTP authentication credentials in this
file when trying to download from a remote host through HTTP or HTTPS. Defaults to
$NIX_CONF_DIR/netrc.
The netrc file consists of a list of accounts in the following format:
machine my-machine login my-username password my-password
For the exact syntax, see the curl documentation.
Note
This must be an absolute path, and ~ is not resolved. For example, ~/.netrc won’t resolve to
your home directory’s .netrc.
Default: /dummy/netrc
• nix-path
List of directories to be searched for <...> file references
In particular, outside of pure evaluation mode, this determines the value of builtins.nixPath.
Default: empty
• plugin-files
A list of plugin files to be loaded by Nix. Each of these files will be dlopened by Nix, allowing them
to affect execution through static initialization. In particular, these plugins may construct static
instances of RegisterPrimOp to add new primops or constants to the expression language,
RegisterStoreImplementation to add new store implementations, RegisterCommand to add new subcommands
to the nix command, and RegisterSetting to add new nix config settings. See the constructors for those
types for more details.
Warning! These APIs are inherently unstable and may change from release to release.
Since these files are loaded into the same address space as Nix itself, they must be DSOs compatible
with the instance of Nix running at the time (i.e. compiled against the same headers, not linked to
any incompatible libraries). They should not be linked to any Nix libs directly, as those will be
available already at load time.
If an entry in the list is a directory, all files in the directory are loaded as plugins (non-
recursively).
Default: empty
• post-build-hook
Optional. The path to a program to execute after each build.
This option is only settable in the global nix.conf, or on the command line by trusted users.
When using the nix-daemon, the daemon executes the hook as root. If the nix-daemon is not involved,
the hook runs as the user executing the nix-build.
• The hook executes after an evaluation-time build.
• The hook does not execute on substituted paths.
• The hook’s output always goes to the user’s terminal.
• If the hook fails, the build succeeds but no further builds execute.
• The hook executes synchronously, and blocks other builds from progressing while it runs.
The program executes with no arguments. The program’s environment contains the following environment
variables:
• DRV_PATH The derivation for the built paths.
Example: /nix/store/5nihn1a7pa8b25l9zafqaqibznlvvp3f-bash-4.4-p23.drv
• OUT_PATHS Output paths of the built derivation, separated by a space character.
Example: /nix/store/zf5lbh336mnzf1nlswdn11g4n2m8zh3g-bash-4.4-p23-dev
/nix/store/rjxwxwv1fpn9wa2x5ssk5phzwlcv4mna-bash-4.4-p23-doc
/nix/store/6bqvbzjkcp9695dq0dpl5y43nvy37pq1-bash-4.4-p23-info
/nix/store/r7fng3kk3vlpdlh2idnrbn37vh4imlj2-bash-4.4-p23-man
/nix/store/xfghy8ixrhz3kyy6p724iv3cxji088dx-bash-4.4-p23.
Default: empty
• pre-build-hook
If set, the path to a program that can set extra derivation-specific settings for this system. This is
used for settings that can’t be captured by the derivation model itself and are too variable between
different versions of the same system to be hard-coded into nix.
The hook is passed the derivation path and, if sandboxes are enabled, the sandbox directory. It can
then modify the sandbox and send a series of commands to modify various settings to stdout. The
currently recognized commands are:
• extra-sandbox-paths
Pass a list of files and directories to be included in the sandbox for this build. One entry per
line, terminated by an empty line. Entries have the same format as sandbox-paths.
Default: empty
• preallocate-contents
Whether to preallocate files when writing objects with known size.
Default: false
• print-missing
Whether to print what paths need to be built or downloaded.
Default: true
• pure-eval
Pure evaluation mode ensures that the result of Nix expressions is fully determined by explicitly
declared inputs, and not influenced by external state:
• Restrict file system and network access to files specified by cryptographic hash
• Disable bultins.currentSystem and builtins.currentTime
Default: false
• require-drop-supplementary-groups
Following the principle of least privilege, Nix will attempt to drop supplementary groups when
building with sandboxing.
However this can fail under some circumstances. For example, if the user lacks the CAP_SETGID
capability. Search setgroups(2) for EPERM to find more detailed information on this.
If you encounter such a failure, setting this option to false will let you ignore it and continue.
But before doing so, you should consider the security implications carefully. Not dropping
supplementary groups means the build sandbox will be less restricted than intended.
This option defaults to true when the user is root (since root usually has permissions to call
setgroups) and false otherwise.
Default: false
• require-sigs
If set to true (the default), any non-content-addressed path added or copied to the Nix store (e.g.
when substituting from a binary cache) must have a signature by a trusted key. A trusted key is one
listed in trusted-public-keys, or a public key counterpart to a private key stored in a file listed in
secret-key-files.
Set to false to disable signature checking and trust all non-content-addressed paths unconditionally.
(Content-addressed paths are inherently trustworthy and thus unaffected by this configuration option.)
Default: true
• restrict-eval
If set to true, the Nix evaluator will not allow access to any files outside of the Nix search path
(as set via the NIX_PATH environment variable or the -I option), or to URIs outside of allowed-uris.
The default is false.
Default: false
• run-diff-hook
If true, enable the execution of the diff-hook program.
When using the Nix daemon, run-diff-hook must be set in the nix.conf configuration file, and cannot be
passed at the command line.
Default: false
• sandbox
If set to true, builds will be performed in a sandboxed environment, i.e., they’re isolated from the
normal file system hierarchy and will only see their dependencies in the Nix store, the temporary
build directory, private versions of /proc, /dev, /dev/shm and /dev/pts (on Linux), and the paths
configured with the sandbox-paths option. This is useful to prevent undeclared dependencies on files
in directories such as /usr/bin. In addition, on Linux, builds run in private PID, mount, network, IPC
and UTS namespaces to isolate them from other processes in the system (except that fixed-output
derivations do not run in private network namespace to ensure they can access the network).
Currently, sandboxing only work on Linux and macOS. The use of a sandbox requires that Nix is run as
root (so you should use the “build users” feature to perform the actual builds under different users
than root).
If this option is set to relaxed, then fixed-output derivations and derivations that have the
__noChroot attribute set to true do not run in sandboxes.
The default is true on Linux and false on all other platforms.
Default: true
Deprecated alias: build-use-chroot, build-use-sandbox
• sandbox-build-dir
The build directory inside the sandbox.
Default: /build
• sandbox-dev-shm-size
This option determines the maximum size of the tmpfs filesystem mounted on /dev/shm in Linux
sandboxes. For the format, see the description of the size option of tmpfs in mount(8). The default is
50%.
Default: 50%
• sandbox-fallback
Whether to disable sandboxing when the kernel doesn’t allow it.
Default: true
• sandbox-paths
A list of paths bind-mounted into Nix sandbox environments. You can use the syntax target=source to
mount a path in a different location in the sandbox; for instance, /bin=/nix-bin will mount the path
/nix-bin as /bin inside the sandbox. If source is followed by ?, then it is not an error if source
does not exist; for example, /dev/nvidiactl? specifies that /dev/nvidiactl will only be mounted in the
sandbox if it exists in the host filesystem.
If the source is in the Nix store, then its closure will be added to the sandbox as well.
Depending on how Nix was built, the default value for this option may be empty or provide /bin/sh as a
bind-mount of bash.
Default: empty
Deprecated alias: build-chroot-dirs, build-sandbox-paths
• secret-key-files
A whitespace-separated list of files containing secret (private) keys. These are used to sign locally-
built paths. They can be generated using nix-store --generate-binary-cache-key. The corresponding
public key can be distributed to other users, who can add it to trusted-public-keys in their nix.conf.
Default: empty
• show-trace
Whether Nix should print out a stack trace in case of Nix expression evaluation errors.
Default: false
• ssl-cert-file
The path of a file containing CA certificates used to authenticate https:// downloads. Nix by default
will use the first of the following files that exists:
1. /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
2. /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/etc/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt
The path can be overridden by the following environment variables, in order of precedence:
1. NIX_SSL_CERT_FILE
2. SSL_CERT_FILE
Default: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
• stalled-download-timeout
The timeout (in seconds) for receiving data from servers during download. Nix cancels idle downloads
after this timeout’s duration.
Default: 300
• start-id
The first UID and GID to use for dynamic ID allocation.
Default: 872415232
• store
The URL of the Nix store to use for most operations. See nix help-stores for supported store types
and settings.
Default: auto
• substitute
If set to true (default), Nix will use binary substitutes if available. This option can be disabled to
force building from source.
Default: true
Deprecated alias: build-use-substitutes
• substituters
A list of URLs of Nix stores to be used as substituters, separated by whitespace. A substituter is an
additional [store]{@docroot@/glossary.md##gloss-store} from which Nix can obtain store objects instead
of building them.
Substituters are tried based on their priority value, which each substituter can set independently.
Lower value means higher priority. The default is https://cache.nixos.org, which has a priority of
40.
At least one of the following conditions must be met for Nix to use a substituter:
• The substituter is in the trusted-substituters list
• The user calling Nix is in the trusted-users list
In addition, each store path should be trusted as described in trusted-public-keys
Default: https://cache.nixos.org/
Deprecated alias: binary-caches
• sync-before-registering
Whether to call sync() before registering a path as valid.
Default: false
• system
The system type of the current Nix installation. Nix will only build a given derivation locally when
its system attribute equals any of the values specified here or in extra-platforms.
The default value is set when Nix itself is compiled for the system it will run on. The following
system types are widely used, as Nix is actively supported on these platforms:
• x86_64-linux
• x86_64-darwin
• i686-linux
• aarch64-linux
• aarch64-darwin
• armv6l-linux
• armv7l-linux
In general, you do not have to modify this setting. While you can force Nix to run a Darwin-specific
builder executable on a Linux machine, the result would obviously be wrong.
This value is available in the Nix language as builtins.currentSystem.
Default: x86_64-linux
• system-features
A set of system “features” supported by this machine, e.g. kvm. Derivations can express a dependency
on such features through the derivation attribute requiredSystemFeatures. For example, the attribute
requiredSystemFeatures = [ “kvm” ];
ensures that the derivation can only be built on a machine with the kvm feature.
This setting by default includes kvm if /dev/kvm is accessible, and the pseudo-features nixos-test,
benchmark and big-parallel that are used in Nixpkgs to route builds to specific machines.
Default: machine-specific
• tarball-ttl
The number of seconds a downloaded tarball is considered fresh. If the cached tarball is stale, Nix
will check whether it is still up to date using the ETag header. Nix will download a new version if
the ETag header is unsupported, or the cached ETag doesn’t match.
Setting the TTL to 0 forces Nix to always check if the tarball is up to date.
Nix caches tarballs in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/nix/tarballs.
Files fetched via NIX_PATH, fetchGit, fetchMercurial, fetchTarball, and fetchurl respect this TTL.
Default: 3600
• timeout
This option defines the maximum number of seconds that a builder can run. This is useful (for instance
in an automated build system) to catch builds that are stuck in an infinite loop but keep writing to
their standard output or standard error. It can be overridden using the --timeout command line switch.
The value 0 means that there is no timeout. This is also the default.
Default: 0
Deprecated alias: build-timeout
• trace-function-calls
If set to true, the Nix evaluator will trace every function call. Nix will print a log message at the
“vomit” level for every function entrance and function exit.
function-trace entered undefined position at 1565795816999559622 function-trace exited undefined
position at 1565795816999581277 function-trace entered /nix/store/…/example.nix:226:41 at
1565795253249935150 function-trace exited /nix/store/…/example.nix:226:41 at 1565795253249941684
The undefined position means the function call is a builtin.
Use the contrib/stack-collapse.py script distributed with the Nix source code to convert the trace
logs in to a format suitable for flamegraph.pl.
Default: false
• trace-verbose
Whether builtins.traceVerbose should trace its first argument when evaluated.
Default: false
• trusted-public-keys
A whitespace-separated list of public keys.
At least one of the following condition must be met for Nix to accept copying a store object from
another Nix store (such as a substituter):
• the store object has been signed using a key in the trusted keys list
• the require-sigs option has been set to false
• the store object is output-addressed
Default: cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY=
Deprecated alias: binary-cache-public-keys
• trusted-substituters
A list of Nix store URLs, separated by whitespace. These are not used by default, but users of the
Nix daemon can enable them by specifying substituters.
Unprivileged users (those set in only allowed-users but not trusted-users) can pass as substituters
only those URLs listed in trusted-substituters.
Default: empty
Deprecated alias: trusted-binary-caches
• trusted-users
A list of user names, separated by whitespace. These users will have additional rights when
connecting to the Nix daemon, such as the ability to specify additional substituters, or to import
unsigned NARs.
You can also specify groups by prefixing names with @. For instance, @wheel means all users in the
wheel group.
Warning
Adding a user to trusted-users is essentially equivalent to giving that user root access to the
system. For example, the user can access or replace store path contents that are critical for
system security.
Default: root
• use-case-hack
Whether to enable a Darwin-specific hack for dealing with file name collisions.
Default: false
• use-cgroups
Whether to execute builds inside cgroups. This is only supported on Linux.
Cgroups are required and enabled automatically for derivations that require the uid-range system
feature.
Default: false
• use-registries
Whether to use flake registries to resolve flake references.
Warning This setting is part of an experimental feature.
To change this setting, you need to make sure the corresponding experimental feature, flakes, is
enabled. For example, include the following in nix.conf:
extra-experimental-features = flakes
use-registries = ...
Default: true
• use-sqlite-wal
Whether SQLite should use WAL mode.
Default: true
• use-xdg-base-directories
If set to true, Nix will conform to the XDG Base Directory Specification for files in $HOME. The
environment variables used to implement this are documented in the Environment Variables section.
Warning This changes the location of some well-known symlinks that Nix creates, which might
break tools that rely on the old, non-XDG-conformant locations.
In particular, the following locations change:
┌──────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Old │ New │
├──────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ~/.nix-profile │ $XDG_STATE_HOME/nix/profile │
├──────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ~/.nix-defexpr │ $XDG_STATE_HOME/nix/defexpr │
├──────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ~/.nix-channels │ $XDG_STATE_HOME/nix/channels │
└──────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
If you already have Nix installed and are using profiles or channels, you should migrate manually when
you enable this option. If $XDG_STATE_HOME is not set, use $HOME/.local/state/nix instead of
$XDG_STATE_HOME/nix. This can be achieved with the following shell commands:
nix_state_home=${XDG_STATE_HOME-$HOME/.local/state}/nix
mkdir -p $nix_state_home
mv $HOME/.nix-profile $nix_state_home/profile
mv $HOME/.nix-defexpr $nix_state_home/defexpr
mv $HOME/.nix-channels $nix_state_home/channels
Default: false
• user-agent-suffix
String appended to the user agent in HTTP requests.
Default: empty
• warn-dirty
Whether to warn about dirty Git/Mercurial trees.
Default: true
nix.conf(5)