[Nix-dev] NixOS inside a 64-bit Xen Guest (x86_64)

[Jim Pick]

Hi,

I've managed to hack up NixOS enough that I can run it inside a 64-bit 
Xen session (as a guest).

I don't have any installable images yet, but I have my modifications 
stored in git, so I decided it would be worthwhile to share them.

   http://github.com/jpick/nixos-xen64-nixos/tree/master
   http://github.com/jpick/nixos-xen64-nixpkgs/tree/master

I bootstraped it by first installing NixOS inside VirtualBox on my Mac 
(which now supports 64-bit), then I tarred it up, and manually created 
an image on my server.  I had to manually modify the initrd so I could 
get it to work with a kernel I already had.  Then I figured out how to 
build a kernel with NixOS with a configuration that worked.  I had to 
make some modifications to the startup scripts as well (eg. different 
device names).

It would be nice to get the modifications cleanly merged upstream.  The 
hacks I currently have are more of the 'brute force' variety.

In the new year, I'm hoping to do some more work on this.  I'd also like 
to see if I could make a NixOS image for Amazon's EC2.

Cheers,

  - Jim