Single-user installer botches the .profile file for weird home directories

[grahamc]

Describe the bug

After installing Nix it says to load the nix.sh profile, like this:

Installation finished!  To ensure that the necessary environment
variables are set, either log in again, or type

  . /home/grahamc/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh

in your shell.

however, if you have spaces in your name it breaks. It gets worse from there:

Installation finished!  To ensure that the necessary environment
variables are set, either log in again, or type

  . / /\//*/'/"//.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh

in your shell.

Unfortunately this is not the only problem. After installing Nix I get errors when logging in:

-e: command not found
-bash: / /\//*/'/"//.profile: line 29: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"'
-bash: / /\//*/'/"//.profile: line 30: syntax error: unexpected end of file

this is because these paths are not properly handled in the modifications to my .profile:

$ tail -n1 .profile 
if [ -e / /\//*/'/"//.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh ]; then . / /\//*/'/"//.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh; fi # added by Nix installer

Steps To Reproduce

1. Play silly games (make your home directory / /\\/*/'/")
2. Install Nix
3. Win silly prizes (a lot of software breaks by mishandling the data)

Expected behavior

Nix should properly handle the $HOME variable contents, or leave expanding it to the caller.

nix-env --version output

2.4

Additional context

n/a

[abathur]

Good candidate for that installer test suite :)

[abathur]

edit: nm; this was semi-recently touched in #3834 and #5459, though after looking at both it looks like the problem existed before

[ghost]

I am observing this in a fresh Debian installation provisioned with lima.
In my case, .profile has an errant -e:

-e 
if [ -e /home/me.linux/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh ]; then . /home/me.linux/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh; fi # added by Nix installer

[abathur]

@efx I think you're actually seeing the issue documented in #5458 and fixed in #5459 (not yet released)

[ghost]

@abathur awesome, thanks for clarifying!

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[parke]

Here is an additional error case: If ~/.profile does not exist, then the install prints the following:

Note: a multi-user installation is possible. See https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/installation/installing-binary.html#multi-user-installation
performing a single-user installation of Nix...
copying Nix to /nix/store.................................................
replacing old 'nix-2.18.1'
installing 'nix-2.18.1'
unpacking channels...

Installation finished!  To ensure that the necessary environment
variables are set, please add the line

  . 

to your shell profile (e.g. ~/.profile).