macOS 15 Sequoia clobbers _nixbld1-4 users

[abathur]

Note: I keep this first comment up-to-date. It includes fixes. You do not have to read the thread unless you are having trouble with its suggestions!

The macOS 15 Sequoia update takes 4 UIDs in the range we've been using, clobbering any _nixbldN users in the way (typically _nixbld1-4).

This manifests as:

• On existing installs, build errors like: error: the user '_nixbld1' in the group 'nixbld' does not exist

  To fix this, run our migration script (which relocates/replaces _nixbld users) before or after taking the macOS 15 Sequoia update:

  curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://github.com/NixOS/nix/raw/master/scripts/sequoia-nixbld-user-migration.sh | bash -
  

  Caution: If you installed Nix with a third-party installer, you should check with them for additional/different instructions.

• On fresh installs (with unpatched installer versions), the following error creating user _nixbld1:

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

  While the 2.24.6+ installers are fixed, older installers don't all work at the moment. (The installer fixes for this have been backported for every release back to the 2.18 series--but these aren't all quite released yet.)

  If you're trying to install versions from 2.20.0 and 2.24.5, you can explicitly override the starting UID:

  NIX_FIRST_BUILD_UID="351" sh <(curl -L <whatever release-specific installer URL you need>)
  

  If you run into this error with versions older than 2.18, you'll need to download the installer tarball for your platform, unpack it, and update the first UID in install-darwin-multi-user.sh to 351.

More background/context on the issue

Edit: As the macOS release is near, I'm tucking context away to focus the first comment on how users can fix broken installs.

Reports are percolating about the upcoming macOS Sequoia 15 (from people trying the beta out) using 4 UIDs in the range we've been using:

• nix install breaks on UID clash #6153 (comment)
• nix install breaks on UID clash #6153 (comment)
• https://mastodon.social/@ryanbooker/112597391954278800

History on our previous change and ID range selection is in:

• fix nixbld user name/uid for macOS/darwin #4532
• macOS update "booted to Recovery" because "an error occurred migrating user data" on Big Sur/Monterey w/ multi-user Nix present  #4531

PRs to address:

• installer fix: install-darwin: fix _nixbld uids for macOS sequoia #10919
• migration script to fix existing installs w/o reinstalling: add UID migration script for macOS Sequoia 15 #11075

[fbettag]

cat /etc/passwd on sequoia shows

_aonsensed:*:300:300:Always On Sense Daemon:/var/db/aonsensed:/usr/bin/false
_modelmanagerd:*:301:301:Model Manager:/var/db/modelmanagerd:/usr/bin/false
_reportsystemmemory:*:302:302:ReportSystemMemory:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_swtransparencyd:*:303:303:Software Transparency Services:/var/db/swtransparencyd:/usr/bin/false
_naturallanguaged:*:304:304:Natural Language Services:/var/db/com.apple.naturallanguaged:/usr/bin/false
_oahd:*:441:441:OAH Daemon:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false

[ryanbooker]

Perhaps count down from 400? That's what I've done locally to fix the immediate issue. FYI, everything works with an arbitrary range, e.g. 3001–3032.

[abathur]

No personal objection to counting down as a strategy, but:

• IIRC the code that does this is in the general installer so we'd be changing it (and the "first" UID defaults) for linux as well.
• Since the starting UIDs are overridable via environment variables, a naive flip in the order would technically be a breaking interface change for anyone actually doing scripted installs that pre-set UIDs. (No clue how common this is in the wild.) We could try to preserve the semantics/behavior of the current env by doing math on the value, but it may turn into a bit of a stumbling block over time if people get used to it going in reverse order and expect the variable to control the number it counts down from?

[roberth]

Also affects nix-darwin

• macOS Sequoia replaces _nixbld{1,2,3,4} with system users causing darwin-rebuild to fail LnL7/nix-darwin#970

[stepbrobd]

Question 1:
Would it be possible to workaround this without reinstalling Nix on macOS systems with ids option (exposed but not in docs, and changing the settings doesn't change anyting)?

Q1 RFC:
In this file, nixbld = 300; is set but this is not used anywhere. Perhaps we can add an idempotent shell script to add/remove nixbld group and nixbld* users on every rebuild?

Question 2:
For NixOS systems, if I'm understanding the docs correctly, nixbld* users are not needed to perform builds when auto-allocate-uids or cgroups is enabled, is there anything equivalent to these on macOS systems?

[abathur]

@michaelvanstraten noted in #6153 (comment) that you can get unblocked on new installs for testing with:

To repeat @ikuz's solution again for a quick fix on macOS 15 install/reinstall with:

 NIX_FIRST_BUILD_UID="351" sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install)

[emilazy]

Some thoughts on where to reassign the IDs:

We need to be below (or equal to?) UID 400, and Apple has now used up to UID 304. Clearly we should expect they might keep adding users to the low end of this range occasionally. However, running right up against the 400 limit doesn’t seem safe to me either; /etc/group on my Sonoma machine contains groups from 395 to 400, so it seems like Apple considers the upper end of the system range to be its for the taking as well. The natural place to go, then, would be in the middle of the range.

We default to 32 build users currently. The main reason you might want more is that it limits the number of concurrent build jobs, and the number of those you might want to run is proportional to the cores/threads on your machine. The highest number of cores on a currently-shipping Mac is the 24‐core M2 Ultra, they used to ship Xeons with 48 threads (24 cores × 2 threads/core), and there are rumours of a 32‐core M3 Ultra and even a 64‐core M3 Ultimate. We can’t fit more than 96 users at the absolute maximum as of Sequoia, and that would obviously be risky, so let’s say we want to plan to have space for around 64 to 80 build users.

I suggest we start at 331 (if we want to keep the last digit matching the build user number) or 330 (if we don’t). That gives us enough margin for Apple to add ~26 new users before we run into problems again, 38 empty spaces above the top UID for the current default of 32 users, and just enough space to squeeze in 64 users before hitting the 395 ID that Apple has already used for a group.

The other good candidate would be 321/320; that reduces the margin on the low end to ~16 new Apple users, but increases the margin on the upper end, to (if using 320) just barely allow squeezing in 80 users in the available range. Personally I feel like the release of an 80‐core Mac would make me scared for 96 to 128‐core Macs that we have no realistic way of adding enough users for with our current approach anyway, and we have precedent that Apple is happy to add users on the low end of the range, so I lean towards 331 to give us more margin on that side. But I’m ambivalent if people have a strong preference for more margin to add and think that Apple will continue adding system users at a restrained enough pace compared to core count inflation. 331 spreads our users around the middle of the available range for 32 users, 321 does the same for 64 users.

This would also be a good opportunity to change the group ID; the current default of 30000 has the unfortunate effect of making the group show up in System Settings, unlike system groups. I would suggest using a related ID of 330 or 320 depending on the choice, and perhaps renaming it to _nixbld for consistency with the user names and other system groups (unless there’s any reason not to?).

Since we have to coordinate this with two installers and nix-darwin and get a migration plan in place before the release of Sequoia, I hope we can commit to a set of IDs ASAP to enable this to go smoothly.

[emilazy]

Incidentally I note that _oahd has UID 441 which makes me wonder if Apple has secretly expanded the system user range without updating the meagre documentation of it? But I remember it being a pain to test and reproduce the issues that led us to use the system UID range in the first place, so it’d need careful verification of the bounds if we wanted to see if we could go beyond 400.

[emilazy]

Some more investigation:

It seems like groups with GID < 500 don’t show up in System Settings. This may imply that the system UID range has also expanded, but I don’t know a convenient way to check, and anyway considering that Apple is using the middle of that range with 441 it might be awkward real estate to occupy; who knows what values Apple might pick in future. (There are also groups with higher GIDs that don’t show up in System Settings (e.g. com.apple.sharepoint.group.1/“<name>’s Public Folder”) that have dsAttrTypeNative:IsHidden: 1 in dscl(1) and Directory Utility, but setting that for the nixbld group didn’t seem to help.)

The maximum in‐use UID < 400 went from 297 to 304 in one version. I don’t know what the historical growth rate is like, but I’d definitely be more comfortable with 331 than 321 given that. If the growth continued at the rate of Sequoia (which seems unlikely, but still), we’d have to think of a new idea in 4 OS releases rather than 3. In general it seems like we’re on borrowed time here and I’m not really sure what the long‐term solution is. We may have to migrate now with the expectation of migrating again later.

If we could verify that UIDs < 500 now work fine, I suppose one solution would be to start at, say, 360 now, and hope Apple don’t eat up the lower 400s range if we start having machines that want 64 users. But I don’t remember how to test that.

[abathur]

Incidentally I note that _oahd has UID 441 which makes me wonder if Apple has secretly expanded the system user range without updating the meagre documentation of it?

Does this mean you looked at the usage info for sysadminctl and it still says 200-400?

But I remember it being a pain to test and reproduce the issues that led us to use the system UID range in the first place, so it’d need careful verification of the bounds if we wanted to see if we could go beyond 400.

Yeah. The main manifestation I recall was the system giving an obtuse adrenaline-inducing error message and booting into recovery mode during system updates that require a full reboot cycle. Looking back over the thread, it looks like that got less-scary on the next point release. The other was the build users showing up in a user list.

If we wanted to try moving outside of the current range, I suspect a workable protocol would be installing into the new range on a sub-sequoia version and then running the sequoia update and seeing if it blows up. (I don't currently have a spare mac that's eligible for this update, so someone else will have to drive...)

It can't save us from needing to fix this UID issue in the short run, but one way to address the long-run problem would be to figure out if we can get the various issues with auto-allocate-uids sorted out in order to make it the default. (The detsys folks tried defaulting to this in their installer and ran into trouble that compelled them to revert it on both macOS and Linux.)

After I hit post here I'll start drafting a feedback/radar report for Apple. Once I do, I'll also email their devrel about it, and post the FB number here in case anyone wants to refer to it from their own FB report. I'm not terribly optimistic about that helping (for example, I never got a response on the reports I opened about the big sur issue in 2021), but I guess there's an outside chance they'll improve their updater to relocate any UID/GID they trample to another valid ID.

(That would leave people with Weird installs--they might fail to fully clean up when they follow the uninstall instructions for example--but I think it would at least not break every existing macOS install made since early 2022 or whenever the multi-user default was released...)

---

For searchability, here's one real manifestation of this on an existing install (from ##10912):

...
these 13 derivations will be built:
  /nix/store/jcrd05mlpsw8wmixwd133pv3q3xbm18w-nerdfonts-3.2.1.drv
  ...
error: the user '_nixbld1' in the group 'nixbld' does not exist

[emilazy]

Does this mean you looked at the usage info for sysadminctl and it still says 200-400?

On Sonoma, which already has that _oahd user, yes; so if that’s within the system UID range and there’s not something weird going on with that user specifically and groups in the 400 to 500 range (perfectly possible! OAH is the internal name for Rosetta 2, as I understand it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are strange things going on there), then they expanded it without updating what passes for the “documentation”. I haven’t tried Sequoia yet, so I can’t comment on what the command says there.

Yeah. The main manifestation I recall was the system giving an obtuse adrenaline-inducing error message and booting into recovery mode during system updates that require a full reboot cycle. Looking back over the thread, it looks like that got less-scary on the next point release. The other was the build users showing up in a user list.

I think filling up the visible user list with 32 random daemon users is scary and off‐putting to users (especially in the absence of an official upstream uninstaller), so even if the more fundamental issues might be solved now I’d be reluctant to settle on that unless we can find another way to hide them.

It can't save us from needing to fix this UID issue in the short run, but one way to address the long-run problem would be to figure out if we can get the various issues with auto-allocate-uids sorted out in order to make it the default. (The detsys folks tried defaulting to this in their installer and ran into trouble that compelled them to revert it on both macOS and Linux.)

Yes, I would love this. If we can commit in the interim to e.g. UIDs starting at 331 and a GID of 330, hopefully that would give us enough runway to make something workable out of auto-allocate-uids. I remember hearing that the problems were worse on macOS than Linux, though (e.g. DeterminateSystems/nix-installer#521, DeterminateSystems/nix-installer#580 (comment) – I guess the lack of user namespaces really makes it tricky).

[abathur]

Ok, I've reported this in FB13917314 and emailed the devrel about it. For reference, report is roughly:

macOS 15 Sequoia beta installer clobbering existing role users with UIDs 301-304

We're getting reports (example: #10912) that the Sequoia update is clobbering existing build users for the Nix package manager, causing later errors such as:

error: the user '_nixbld1' in the group 'nixbld' does not exist

Users who have taken the update report seeing new users in this range in /etc/passwd:

_aonsensed:*:300:300:Always On Sense Daemon:/var/db/aonsensed:/usr/bin/false
_modelmanagerd:*:301:301:Model Manager:/var/db/modelmanagerd:/usr/bin/false
_reportsystemmemory:*:302:302:ReportSystemMemory:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_swtransparencyd:*:303:303:Software Transparency Services:/var/db/swtransparencyd:/usr/bin/false
_naturallanguaged:*:304:304:Natural Language Services:/var/db/com.apple.naturallanguaged:/usr/bin/false
_oahd:*:441:441:OAH Daemon:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false

A few years ago, the Nix installer used UIDs from 30001-30032 by default. The issue I reported in FB8997501 started causing trouble when users with these UIDs were present, so in response we took the hint from the usage note in sysadminctl ("Role accounts require name starting with _ and UID in 200-400 range") and migrated our build user UID defaults to 301-332.

The current behavior of the beta installer will break all existing multi-user Nix installs on macOS made in the last few years, confusing a lot of users in the process.

I can imagine at least two improvements that would help us out, here:

• If these UIDs don't need to be hardcoded on your end, avoid clobbering existing role users and select a UID that doesn't clash.
• If these UIDs need to be hardcoded, relocate any existing users to new unoccupied UIDs in the role user range.

[emilazy]

I can confirm that Sequoia’s sysadminctl says the same thing, so if there’s been any change it remains undocumented.

[ahcm]

On Macos 15 beta, users added with -roleAccount but no leading _ get an automatic user id >500.
With _ underscore one gets the following message:
Role account requires specified UID in 450-499 range.

While the help still gives the footnote:
*Role accounts require name starting with _ and UID in 200-400 range.

[lloeki]

For searchability too (thanks @abathur!), I had error: the user '_nixbld1' in the group 'nixbld' does not exist, if anyone needs to get out of this hole in a pinch, here's what I did to fill in the blanks:

# check your _nixbld users for who's missing
dscl . list /Users UniqueID | grep _nixbld | sort -n -k2

# check what are the non-nix used ones, so that you can find a hole in there
dscl . list /Users UniqueID | grep -v _nixbld | sort -n -k2

# fill in the blanks, mine were 1 to 4, I picked 401 as the start:
for i in {1..4}; do
  sudo dscl . -create "/Users/_nixbld${i}" UniqueID $(( 400 + ${i} ))
  sudo dscl . -create "/Users/_nixbld${i}" PrimaryGroupID 30000
  sudo dscl . -create "/Users/_nixbld${i}" IsHidden 1
  sudo dscl . -create "/Users/_nixbld${i}" RealName "_nixbld${i}"
  sudo dscl . -create "/Users/_nixbld${i}" NFSHomeDirectory '/var/empty'
: sudo createhomedir -cu "_nixbld${i}"
  sudo dscl . -create "/Users/_nixbld${i}" UserShell /sbin/nologin
done

# that's just for having the survivors be consistent, also using 401 as the start
for i in {5..32}; do
  id="$(dscl . -read "/Users/_nixbld${i}" UniqueID | cut -d' ' -f2)"
  sudo dscl . change "/Users/_nixbld${i}" UniqueID $id $(( 400 + ${i} ))
done

[lloeki]

FYI on my work laptop (still Sonoma 14) I have these:

-----8<-----
_backgroundassets        291
_mobilegestalthelper     293
_audiomxd                294
_terminusd               295
_neuralengine            296
_eligibilityd            297
-----8<-----
_nixbld{1-32} {301-332}
-----8<-----
_oahd                    441
_sentinelguard           498
_sentinel                499

Note:

• _oahd 441 is already there; apparently it's Rosetta 2 related (/usr/libexec/rosetta/oahd) and part of the AOT compiler
• I think _sentinel 498 and _sentinelguard 499 come from some company-managed security software (SentinelOne)

EDIT: confirmed that these two are SentinelOne

[dapkdapk]

I don't know what was included in this macOS update. But the problem seems to be fixed in version Sequoia 15.1 (24B83). At least for me. Can anyone else confirm this?

[abathur]

I don't know what was included in this macOS update. But the problem seems to be fixed in version Sequoia 15.1 (24B83). At least for me. Can anyone else confirm this?

Can you clarify some details here? Maybe like:

• did you install 15.1 from 14 or earlier, or do you mean your Nix install was broken on 15.0 and is now working?
• what gid/uid do your _nixbld group and users have?
• when did you install Nix?

[dapkdapk]

I don't know what was included in this macOS update. But the problem seems to be fixed in version Sequoia 15.1 (24B83). At least for me. Can anyone else confirm this?

Can you clarify some details here?..

Yes, sorry.

1. I had previously installed MacOSX 15.0 and had exactly the problems described here. Before that, I had 14.x and no problems. With 15.0, I've uninstalled NixOS completely and also deleted the volume. Among other things, I also deleted all nixbld-users (as @Teebor-Choka pointed out). The new installation did not help. Then I gave up. This happened in Sept. It was only when update 15.1 came along that I tried again and did a NixOS update over the old failed attempt. The bash files had to be reset again and then everything went smoothly.

2. Now I have the users _nixbld1-32

I can no longer say in detail which NixOS version it was before. But now it is currently Nix 2.24.10. I use a Mac14,6 Apple M2 Max.

[tahoeschrader]

I cannot get this working due to the following error:

It seems the build user _nixbld1 already exists, but with the UID
with the UID '30000'. This script can't really handle that right
now, so I'm going to give up.

If you already created the users and you know they start from
30000 and go up from there, you can edit this script and change
NIX_FIRST_BUILD_UID near the top of the file to 30000 and try
again.

We'd love to help if you need it.

I tried the suggested NIX_FIRST_BUILD_UID="351" sh <(curl -L <whatever release-specific installer URL you need>) which told me to rerun with 30000. I tried that and it said to rerun with 305. I even tried completely uninstalling and starting from scratch by following the uninstall instructions but still am running into this series of errors.

In fact, I can't even succesfully uninstall due to the error mentioned above that sent me down this path in the first place.

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

[abathur]

I don't know what "this" is here, but the error message sounds like you're trying to run the installer with un-migrated build users present.

I'd follow the uninstall instructions before reinstalling: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/installation/uninstall.html#macos

[tahoeschrader]

I did, and step three returns the same error as trying to properly fix the initial _nixbld1-4 issues. That is what I'm referring to as "this", i.e. this github issue

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

Aka not only can I not migrate the build users, I can't uninstall for the same issue.

[abathur]

Can you please provide a full console log here? (of the uninstall)

[Eveeifyeve]

I did, and step three returns the same error as trying to properly fix the initial _nixbld1-4 issues. That is what I'm referring to as "this", i.e. this github issue

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

Aka not only can I not migrate the build users, I can't uninstall for the same issue.

can you log the user ids that are being used and paste it here?

[martin-braun]

If I set

export NIX_FIRST_BUILD_UID="351"

it complains about

It seems the build user _nixbld5 already exists, but with the UID
with the UID '305'. This script can't really handle that right
now, so I'm going to give up.

If you already created the users and you know they start from
305 and go up from there, you can edit this script and change
NIX_FIRST_BUILD_UID near the top of the file to 305 and try
again.

But, if I set

export NIX_FIRST_BUILD_UID="305"

it complains about

It seems the build user _nixbld1 already exists, but with the UID
with the UID '351'. This script can't really handle that right
now, so I'm going to give up.

If you already created the users and you know they start from
351 and go up from there, you can edit this script and change
NIX_FIRST_BUILD_UID near the top of the file to 351 and try
again.

Yes, I had nix installed previous and I followed clear instruction how to remove it properly, yet it did not do so. The users still exist, I circumvented this by running:

for i in $(seq 1 32); do sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Users/_nixbld$i"; done

[abathur]

User removal is covered in step 3 of the uninstall instructions: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/installation/uninstall.html#macos

[tahoeschrader]

Sorry for late response but I decided to just factory reset
my mac to fix this issue instead. Following the recommended procedures wasn't working for me but I could easily have been doing something wrong since I don't really understand nix and am only using it for some extremely basic home manager stuff.

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nix-on-macos-sequoia/57642/2

[cvanlabe]

I ran curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://github.com/NixOS/nix/raw/master/scripts/sequoia-nixbld-user-migration.sh | bash - yesterday on a MacOS 14 nix installation. After reboot, my nix setup was messed up. The nix command itself didn't work anymore. As far as I could tell, the output of it didn't show any error or warning, all ran successfully. It took me a whole lot of efforts to fix it as the uninstall instructions for MacOS are not correct. For example: they are missing the steps to remove /etc/static (different discussion in a different GitHub issue).

Anyway, after it was back up and running I'm getting these warnings:

setting up groups...
warning: existing group 'nixbld' has unexpected gid 350, skipping...
setting up users...
warning: existing user '_nixbld1' has unexpected uid 351, skipping...
warning: existing user '_nixbld2' has unexpected uid 352, skipping...
...

Is this expected after having ran that script?

Further, I then today upgraded to MacOS Sequoia, and whilst everything seems to be ok, I still get that warning message on every darwin-rebuild or nix run nix-darwin.

How do we get rid of these messages if the system is healthy?

[abathur]

@cvanlabe the installer has been fixed to use the new uids on any macos version for a while, so fresh installs don't need to be migrated.

/etc/static isn't a nix thing, it's a nix-darwin thing.

[cnemo-cenic]

The script in the top comment isn't working for me

~ % curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://github.com/NixOS/nix/raw/master/scripts/sequoia-nixbld-user-migration.sh | bash -
Didn't find any _nixbld users. Perhaps you have single-user Nix?
~ % dscl . -list /Users | grep _nixbld
_nixbld10
_nixbld11
_nixbld12
_nixbld13
_nixbld14
_nixbld15
_nixbld16
_nixbld17
_nixbld18
_nixbld19
_nixbld20
_nixbld21
_nixbld22
_nixbld23
_nixbld24
_nixbld25
_nixbld26
_nixbld27
_nixbld28
_nixbld29
_nixbld30
_nixbld31
_nixbld32
_nixbld5
_nixbld6
_nixbld7
_nixbld8
_nixbld9

[abathur]

What does dscl . list /Users UniqueID | grep _nixbld | sort -n -k2 report?

[cnemo-cenic]

@abathur

_nixbld5                  305
_nixbld6                  306
_nixbld7                  307
_nixbld8                  308
_nixbld9                  309
_nixbld10                 310
_nixbld11                 311
_nixbld12                 312
_nixbld13                 313
_nixbld14                 314
_nixbld15                 315
_nixbld16                 316
_nixbld17                 317
_nixbld18                 318
_nixbld19                 319
_nixbld20                 320
_nixbld21                 321
_nixbld22                 322
_nixbld23                 323
_nixbld24                 324
_nixbld25                 325
_nixbld26                 326
_nixbld27                 327
_nixbld28                 328
_nixbld29                 329
_nixbld30                 330
_nixbld31                 331
_nixbld32                 332

[abathur]

Thanks. Those all look like I'd expect.

What about dscl . list /Users UniqueID | grep -E '\b_nixbld'; echo $??

I'd expect this to echo "0" at the end, but it seems like the status is non-zero on your end. If it is non-zero, can you also check type -a grep and grep --version?

[cnemo-cenic]

lol it's non-zero and it's toybox... d'oh

[cnemo-cenic]

Ok so \b and \w are non-posix additions to extended regular expressions. I updated the first two grep invocations in the script to use the macOS /usr/bin/grep, which is "grep (BSD grep, GNU compatible) 2.6.0-FreeBSD", and it worked. Thanks for the help, sorry for the oddball system.

[hiteshsahu]

It worked on MacOS Sequoi 15.1.1 on Jan 2025

You need to run this command as admin chnage admin in below command with your admin name

// Login as admin first in terminal
su admin


// Do the migration
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://github.com/NixOS/nix/raw/master/scripts/sequoia-nixbld-user-migration.sh | bash -\n

[Eveeifyeve]

It worked on MacOS Sequoi 15.1.1 on Jan 2025

You need to run this command as admin chnage admin in below command with your admin name

It shouldn't need su <user> for the script to run? Could you provide logs?

[butterflyhug]

I'm pretty sure @hiteshsahu is saying that they normally run as a "standard user" instead of an administrator account. (The user created by Apple's first-run setup assistant is an admin.) The difference is that standard users are not in /etc/sudoers (or any equivalent mechanisms for system-level configuration in the Mac UI). Most Mac users always run as an admin and in many cases haven't ever explored the Users configuration enough to realize that another account type even exists, so this is a somewhat unusual setup, although I also only log into the graphical environment as a standard user on my personal Macs so you've got at least two of us here 🙂

[hiteshsahu]

Thats true I have similar setup for my work laptop and I have perform this action as admin. For normal user it should not be the case.