First I show you the same procedure in a normal directly:
git init
git add .
git commit -m "first commit"
In an normal directory (~/testGit for instance), it works without problem.
I want to do the same in the directory /etc/nixos.
First I have to do this:
git config --global --add safe.directory /etc/nixos
otherwise I get this message:
fatal: detected dubious ownership in repository at '/etc/nixos' To add an exception for this directory, call:
git config --global --add safe.directory /etc/nixos
The 2 first commands work well although I have to use sudo:
sudo git init
sudo git add .
but the third one fails
sudo git commit -m "first commit"
Author identity unknown
*** Please tell me who you are.
Run
git config --global user.email "you@example.com" git config --global user.name "Your Name"
to set your account's default identity. Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.
fatal: unable to auto-detect email address (got 'root@nixos.(none)')
Of course I followed the instructions:
git config --global user.email "myemail@example.com"
git config --global user.name "MY Name"
but it still doesn't work.
In am running nixos on virtualbox. I don't think it is important but at least you know.
git config --global sets stuff globally for the user, i.e., in ~/.gitconfig, not for the whole system, like in /etc/git or such. "Globally" means really "for all git repositories this user accesses from this machine".
Run the git config commands with sudo to set the root user's git credentials:
sudo git config --global user.email "myemail@example.com"
sudo git config --global user.name "MY Name"
After this, if you use an external service like github and authenticate with ssh, you may also need to copy your ssh key (or better create a new one for root) and add that to root's ~/.ssh settings.
Because ssh really cares about file ownership and permissions, you may need to sudo chown -R root ~root/.ssh and sudo chmod 600 ~root/.ssh/*