How to handle a non-persistent home directory?

[coffeepenbit]

Problem

I'm trying to deal with a non-persistent home directory on one of my machines. The home directory is recreated each startup.

Solution attempts

I've tried storing the destination files pertinent to chezmoi in a persistent location and symlinking, which results in errors (I believe this is a documented as out-of-scope for chezmoi).

I've also considered having chezmoi apply automatically run at startup, but then I run into the issue of dealing with my secrets manager requesting a password.

The only other solution I can think of is doing something convoluted using chezmoiscripts. I'd like to confirm I'm not missing something here before I go through the work of setting this up.

[twpayne]

I'd suggest chezmoi apply as the best way.

Another option is to use chezmoi archive to generate an archive of your dotfiles and then unpack that on startup. This will avoid you having to type in your secrets manager password each time.

[coffeepenbit]

Thanks for the quick reply!

The archive approach seems nice for this; however, I tried tried adding the command in a run_after_ script. Chezmoi then warns me about a modified config, as well as prompting for the same password I'm trying to avoid dealing with.

I'm guessing this is something wrong on my side because I can't clean anything in the source code that would cause this by executing the archive command. I'll keep hacking away at this.

[halostatue]

You shouldn't be able to run chezmoi archive in a run_after_ script because it is a specialized form of chezmoi apply (apply into a tarball), so it needs to work with state.

You might have some luck with a variation of @Lockszmith-GH's suggestions in #2574 (two different states; one with secrets the other without) or you have a workflow such that on home creation, you unpack the previously stored archive and when you know there are updates, you have a script that applies and then makes a new archive in the persistent store.

[coffeepenbit]

Thanks for the insight @halostatue and for confirming the behavior I observed.

I took inspiration from the previous approach and ran archived the files from chezmoi managed inside a run_after_ script. This will always have the latest files and I won't need to enter the password (after running chezmoi apply

Thanks for the support, you two