dconf.settings are not being applied on NixOS

[kamadorueda]

Issue description

Some weeks ago I was using home-manager from within Ubuntu, when I ran home-manager switch then the dconf.settings were correctly applied to the system

I migrated to NixOS some days ago, now I bootstrap home-manager in my /etc/nixos/configuration.nix in config.home-manager.users as explained in the tutorial.

Most home-manager's configurations work on NixOS, like programs, xdg, and home, and it's pretty useful to me, all my system runs on NixOS/home-manager now. However dconf.settings are not reflected

I was debugging the issue and found that on NixOS the activation script is run as a systemd service:

https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/blob/1375fd4a030c27e6c6208b31b8189ca41da01fb0/nixos/default.nix#L121:L149

Dconf also appends some activation logic so dconf loads the dconf.settings on a dbus session:

https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/blob/1375fd4a030c27e6c6208b31b8189ca41da01fb0/modules/misc/dconf.nix#L52:L68

When run as home-manager switch (in a user shell), DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS exists, and therefore dconf load / < settings.ini runs in the current user dbus session, and changes get reflected and are visible to the user immediately

When run as nixos switch (inside systemd), DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS does not exist, and therefore ${pkgs.dbus}/bin/dbus-run-session dconf load / < settings.ini runs in a new ephemeral user dbus session that ultimately gets discarded, and changes are not reflected nor visible to the user immediately (nor after reboot, basically never)

In order to see dbus.settings applied on NixOS, I've to manually source the activation script from a user shell, so it loads the settings in my current dbus session

I've tried to solve the problem by learning about dbus, dconf and systemd, also tried some changes to home-manager's source code, but ultimately I couldn't solve the problem

Meta

Maintainer CC

@gnidorah @rycee

Technical details

• system: "x86_64-linux"
• host os: Linux 5.10.43, NixOS, 21.05pre-git (Okapi)
• multi-user?: yes
• sandbox: yes
• version: nix-env (Nix) 2.3.12
• channels(root): "home-manager, nixos-21.05.906.cedcf2565c6"
• channels(kamadorueda): ""
• nixpkgs: /nix/store/ym7d82dgryr0ihspnlaf6kbpqikq7fpa-nixpkgsNixos-src

example of NixOS rebuild not working:

$ nixos-rebuild switch
... dconf settings do not change in my host

example of sourcing the activation script manually:

$ cat /etc/systemd/system/home-manager-kamadorueda.service
...
ExecStart=/nix/store/v56vnir1ycr84bm3rmjiw1vb8kv62hsn-activate-kamadorueda
...
$ /nix/store/v56vnir1ycr84bm3rmjiw1vb8kv62hsn-activate-kamadorueda
... dconf settings now work!

[berbiche]

Hi,

Good catch, this indeed looks like a bug with the way some activation scripts depend on variables defined at the systemd's user session level.

I think one way to resolve this issue would be to rewrite some activation scripts in terms of systemd services that run in the user's session. These services would then be triggered by the user HM service.

Is this feasible @rycee?

[feijoas]

I observe the same problem using flakes.

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[Krutonium]

I'm having the same issue, trying to set icons. That said, I'm also not sure I'm doing this 100% correctly.

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[malob]

Still an issue for me.

[berbiche]

I can reproduce this issue when running the activation script from a PTY shell where there is no DBUS session running. Otherwise I am unable to reproduce this issue.

[stale[bot]]

Thank you for your contribution! I marked this issue as stale due to inactivity. Please be considerate of people watching this issue and receiving notifications before commenting 'I have this issue too'. We welcome additional information that will help resolve this issue. Please read the relevant sections below before commenting.

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[chris-martin]

It would be nice to have a note in the docs for dconf.settings mentioning that this option is known to not work -- I just spent a while trying to figure out what I was doing wrong before I found this issue.

[1sixth]

This option has been working for me since late 2022 (too lazy to bisect). FYI, I use home-manager via the NixOS module and start Sway from a tty.

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Memorandum on closing issues

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