NixOS configuration

Current version: 22.05 + flakes

Create a bootable USB drive

• Download NixOS to $ISO_PATH
• insert drive
• lsblk -> find out drive name (e.g. /dev/sdb) $DRIVE
• run (as sudo) dd bs=4M if=$ISO_PATH of=$DRIVE conv=fdatasync status=progress && sync

Actual installation

Roughly this https://qfpl.io/posts/installing-nixos/

• lsblk -> find out disk name (e.g. /dev/sda) $DISK
• gdisk $DISK
  • p (print)
  • d (delete)
  • n (new)
    • number=1, begin=default, end=+1G, hex code=ef00 (not needed if dual boot) ($BOOT from now on, or /dev/sda1 etc)
    • number=2, begin=default, end=default, hex code=8e00 ($MAIN from now on)
  • w (write)
• encryption
  • cryptsetup luksFormat $MAIN
  • cryptsetup luksOpen $MAIN nixos-enc
  • pvcreate /dev/mapper/nixos-enc
  • vgcreate nixos-vg /dev/mapper/nixos-enc
  • lvcreate -L <swap size, e.g. 8G> -n swap nixos-vg
  • lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n root nixos-vg
• create fs
  • mkfs.vfat -n boot $BOOT (not needed if dual boot)
  • mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/nixos-vg/root
  • mkswap -L swap /dev/nixos-vg/swap
  • swapon /dev/nixos-vg/swap
• mount
  • mount /dev/nixos-vg/root /mnt
  • mkdir /mnt/boot
  • mount $BOOT /mnt/boot
• generate config
  • nixos-generate-config --root /mnt
• add stuff to config
  • if dual boot check out https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Dual_Booting_NixOS_and_Windows

dual boot:

boot.loader.grub.enable = true;
boot.loader.grub.version = 2;
boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/sda";
boot.loader.grub.useOSProber = true;

required:

boot.initrd.luks.devices = {
  root = {
    device = "$MAIN";
    preLVM = true;
  };
};

boot.loader.systemd-boot.enable = true;

networking.networkmanager.enable = true;

users.extraUsers.alex = {
  createHome = true;
  extraGroups = ["wheel" "video" "audio" "disk" "networkmanager"];
  group = "users";
  home = "/home/alex";
  isNormalUser = true;
  uid = 1000;
};

• nixos go brrrr
  • nixos-install
  • reboot

to have a DM after first boot:

services.xserver = {
  enable = true;
  displayManager = {
    gdm = {
      enable = true;
      wayland = false;
    };
  };
  desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;  # or xfce or whatever
  # or
  # windowManager.xmonad.enable = true;

  # to be able to mount an external drive to get secrets etc. for cloning from gh
  boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "ntfs" ];

};

Useful

• connect to internet from nmcli
  • find out interface: nmcli d ($IF)
  • enable interface: nmcli r wifi on
  • search networks: nmcli d wifi list
  • connect: nmcli d wifi connect $(B)SSID password $PASSWORD

Post-installation instructions

($CONFIG is the location of this repo)

• git clone git@github.com:alexpeits/nixos-config.git $CONFIG
• sudo nix-channel --add https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/archive/master.tar.gz nixos-hardware
• sudo nix-channel --update
• change your name to alex because it's hardcoded in the configurations
• sudo mkdir -m 0755 -p /nix/var/nix/{profiles,gcroots}/per-user/alex (for home-manager)
• Update flake.nix with new machine (preferably name = hostname)
• sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake '/path/to/nixos/config#<machine name, empty if hostname>