How to run deploy-rs to install a remote system via live disk?

[crabdancing]

I'm not sure if this use case is covered already at all by deploy-rs, but my goal was to have the deployment install to /mnt/ instead of / via a custom live disk. I couldn't see any options that could accommodate this use case. Let me know if there are any, or if I should turn this issue into a feature request.

[eliandoran]

Hi, @alxpettit .

To me the initial setup is slightly different than deployments, in the sense that it usually involves additional steps such as formatting & partitioning drives, generating the hardware configuration; as well as having access to a live environment.

On my side I ended up using nixos-anywhere to manage the initial installation. It uses kexec to run off any live environment and only requires SSH access (which you can do on a live CD just by setting a password to root). It'll manage the disk setup (e.g. formatting, partitioning) with disko and set up the initial install.

The initial setup can be slightly tricky to get right the first time: on my side I forgot to enable SSH and then set up an authorized key on root in order to be able to do the deployments afterwards. The upside is that you can reinstall as many times as necessary since the deployment will be quick and clean.

Once the OS is installed, nixos-anywhere leaves no trace (as far as I know), so you would have then to use deploy-rs to do the further deployments.