Hello, I am affected by this as well, but with slightly different symptoms. Using guix home on a foreign system (Debian 12), I tried different shepherd versions with
(service home-shepherd-service-type (home-shepherd-configuration (shepherd (specification->package "shepherd@0.9"))) , and guix home describe --list-installed shows me that this works (in the sense that a different shepherd version is installed). None of the versions I tried got me a functional shepherd service. These are the error messages by shepherd version: 0.8.1: Service root has been started. WARNING: Use of `load' in declarative module (#{ g91}#). Add #:declarative? #f to your define-module invocation. Loading /gnu/store/w6rlja8v65dwv16ivcqx513q7827n6aq-shepherd.conf. herd: exception caught while executing 'load' on service 'root': In procedure string-append: Wrong type (expecting string): #f No /run/user/1000/shepherd/socket is created. 0.9.3: Service root has been started. WARNING: Use of `load' in declarative module (#{ g117}#). Add #:declarative? #f to your define-module invocation. wrong-type-arg("string-append" "Wrong type (expecting ~A): ~S" ("string" #f) (#f)) Some deprecated features have been used. Set the environment variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED to "detailed" and rerun the program to get more information. Set it to "no" to suppress this message. No /run/user/1000/shepherd/socket is created. 0.10.1: Starting service root... Service root started. Service root running with value #t. Service root has been started. WARNING: Use of `load' in declarative module (#{ g107}#). Add #:declarative? #f to your define-module invocation. wrong-type-arg("string-append" "Wrong type (expecting ~A): ~S" ("string" #f) (#f)) No /run/user/1000/shepherd/socket is created. 0.10.99: Starting service root... Service root started. Service root running with value #t. Service root has been started. WARNING: Use of `load' in declarative module (#{ g119}#). Add #:declarative? #f to your define-module invocation. Uncaught exception while loading configuration file '/gnu/store/w6rlja8v65dwv16ivcqx513q7827n6aq-shepherd.conf': (wrong-type-arg "string-append" "Wrong type (expecting ~A): ~S" ("string" #f) (#f)) , and then the reconfiguration hangs. /run/user/1000/shepherd/socket is created, and herd status shows that root is started, other services are not shown, and are not started. Content of config (/gnu/store/w6rlja8v65dwv16ivcqx513q7827n6aq-shepherd.conf): (begin (use-modules (srfi srfi-34) (system repl error-handling)) (apply register-services (map (lambda (file) (load file)) (quote ("/gnu/store/71n4r0hccps574aqcks7zyk5rz5zardq- shepherd-eww.scm" "/gnu/store/0r14z4psnf9h2nfqiflm0nv6m2bv04si-shepherd-eww-open-lockscreen-like-background.scm" "/gnu/store/ylidynn5akvk3lmqrxbgqkz0c8hn3y8c-shepherd-syncthing .scm" "/gnu/store/9igwbpbwavl6r94ph7qss7i5cqq9d8nj-shepherd-mcron.scm")))) (action (quote root) (quote daemonize)) (format #t "Starting services...~%") (let ((services-to-start (quote (eww eww-open-lockscreen-like-background syncthing mcron)))) (if (defined? (quote start-in-the-background)) (start-in-the-background services-to-start) (for-each start services-to-start)) (redirect-port (open-input-file "/dev/null") (current-input-port)))) ~/.local/state/log/shepherd.log does not contain anything that's not already in the messages above. Is there anything else I can provide? Without a running shepherd, my system doesn't work super well.