bug: 'line 22: USER: unbound variable' running activate as docker container 'root'

[ydewit]

Are you following the right branch?

• My Nixpkgs and Home Manager versions are in sync

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Issue description

Activating home-manager inside an ubuntu docker container (docker run -ti ubuntu) fails with line 22: USER: unbound variable because the root user does not have the USER variable set.

The work around was to export the variable: USER=$(id -un).

Maintainer CC

No response

System information

/nix/store/skjaxjyjqf933mw7pcnhxzms9hk593q9-nix-info
copying path '/nix/store/skjaxjyjqf933mw7pcnhxzms9hk593q9-nix-info' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
 - system: `"x86_64-linux"`
 - host os: `Linux 6.2.6-76060206-generic, Ubuntu, 22.04.2 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish), nobuild`
 - multi-user?: `yes`
 - sandbox: `no`
 - version: `nix-env (Nix) 2.13.3`
 - channels(root): `"home-manager"`
 - nixpkgs: `/nix/store/9m34nhchq3wyjmpvg0gvjnbnq5bg3m8s-source`

[stale]

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[staticdev]

Same issue with Debian container.

[mightybyte]

I also encountered this error message when trying to run home-manager switch. I eventually figured out that the problem happened because I was running that command in a tmux session. When I switched to a "bare" shell that was not run by tmux the problem went away.