bug#45980: Feature request: parameterized /var/guix/profiles/per-user

[Dimitri DELABROYE]

Hi,

We have installed guix following this cluster documentation 
https://hpc.guix.info/blog/2017/11/installing-guix-on-a-cluster/ on 
Grid'5000 which is a testbed.

In order to be more secure we did not want to export /var/guix with RW 
rights, we cannot trust root on the nodes. So for the user profile to 
work we did the following:
    - mount the user's home on the guix server
    - instead of letting guix create the user's profile on 
/var/guix/profiles/per-user we created symlink: ln -s /home/USER/.guix 
/var/guix/profiles/per-user/USER
This way we can export /var/guix with RO rights and users can't see each 
others profiles.

Another way would be to have a parameter to configure the 
/var/guix/profiles/per-user directory so the symlink mecanism would not 
be needed. For example guix could directly write in the user directory 
in /home/USER/.guix.

Best regards,
Dimitri

Grid'5000 Techteam