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Cannot get geolocation to work (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/nix@programming.dev
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Hi, new NixOS user here.

Liking it so far but just hit an issue that I'm having trouble getting past. Pages in firefox cannot access my geolocation, even after I hit allow when the page asks for permission. Same with the default Gnome maps app, it just places me in a central location of my countrys capital (I don't live in the capital).

I've added the following to my configuration.nix file and rebuilt but it made no difference.

 # Geolocation
  services.geoclue2.enable = true;

  environment.sessionVariables = {
    # Allows geolocation in firefox
    MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND = "1"; 
  };

What am I missing?

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[–] 2 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

Do you have some device that provides geolocation capabilities, e.g. a GPS modem, connected to your system? Because otherwise the only way to get your location is via geoip, which can be imprecise enough to place you in a different city, as you can see for yourself.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    No gps modem but geolocation works on my other computer running fedora which also doesn't have gps.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (4 children)

    Hm, interesting. The other user said that geoclue tries using beacondb (I didn't know that :D).

    Can you try running this: $(nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A geoclue2)/libexec/geoclue-2.0/demos/where-am-i ? It should print out your location according to geoclue, and the source which it has used.

    For me, it looks like this:

    ❯ $(nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A geoclue2)/libexec/geoclue-2.0/demos/where-am-i
Client object: /org/freedesktop/GeoClue2/Client/3

New location:
Latitude:    <REDACTED>?
Longitude:   <REDACTED>?
Accuracy:    25000.000000 meters
Speed:       0.000000 meters/second
Description: ipf fallback (from GeoIP data)
Timestamp:   Tue Jul 22 12:02:08 2025 (1753171328 seconds since the Epoch)
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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    My output is slightly difference, it seems I'm not getting data from GeoIP, but from Wifi data.

    $(nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A geoclue2)/libexec/geoclue-2.0/demos/where-am-i
Client object: /org/freedesktop/GeoClue2/Client/1

New location:
Latitude:    <LAT from capital>°
Longitude:   <LONG from capital>°
Accuracy:    25000,000000 meters
Description: ipf fallback (from WiFi data)
Timestamp:   Wed Jul 23 2025 12:51:06 (1753267866 seconds since the Epoch)
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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Hmm, interesting. So this is probably the case of beacondb having incorrect data for your surrounding WiFi APs. I don't know why it works on the other laptop, maybe it uses a different location database?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    GeoIP is the last way. Before that, geoclue will try to locate using found Wi-Fi and Cell towers via beacondb.net (via Mozilla Location Service before it shut down). If beacondb.net return fail or (0, 0), it try GeoIP at last.

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