[Nix-dev] NixOS on Linode

[Malcolm Matalka]

Thank you for the responses everyone.  I'm such a noob at this, I have
some questions.

I'm trying to follow the Rackspace directions, but I'm running into
issues.

1 - I couldn't get anywhere with the Rescue Disk, because I couldn't
install anything on ~.  So instead I created a Gentoo partition of 5
gigs, then devoted the remaining room for where I want to install NixOS

2 - I tried to follow the Rackspace directions but I ran into issues.
The farthest I got was nixos-install and it saying it would not install
because '/' was not a real mount point (or something similar, sorry I
don't have the output).

So here is what I think I should be doing, and hopefully someone can
school me:

1 - I need to have a place I can mount the NixOS install ISO

2 - I need to unsquash that filesystem into a dir so it looks like a
running installation iso

3 - I need to chroot into this, then I can install NixOS as if I were
installing while running the installation ISO.  In this case I should
mount my destination location to /mnt, modify
/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix and do nixos-install

Unfortunately, at step 3 is where I get an error.

Do I understand the procedure correctly?  Am I messing up someplace
obvious?

Thanks!

Kevin Quick <quick at sparq.org> writes:

> Malcolm,
>
> Yes, the wiki page is a bit outdated.  I recently built NixOS on Linode
> largely following this page instead:
> http://nixos.org/wiki/Install_NixOS_on_Rackspace_Cloud_Servers
>
> You'll need to build some other natively supported distribution first,
> and then you can generally follow the above to build a NixOS boot disk.
>
> In the Linode dashboard, configure the "kernel" for the NixOS
> configuration profile to be "pv-grub-x86_64".  I also selected "Xenify
> Distro" and "Disable updatedb", but not "modules.dep Helper" and
> "Automount devtmpfs".
>
> Here are some excerpts from my configuration.nix:
>
> { config, pkgs, modulesPath, ... }:
>
> {
>   require =
>     [ ./hardware-configuration.nix   # This is essentially empty
>
>       # The following should be used, but can't be currently because
>       # services.mingettys.ttys is no longer a valid specification, so
>       # individual elements are reproduced below
>       # "${modulesPath}/virtualisation/xen-domU.nix"
>     ];
>
>   boot = {
>     initrd.kernelModules = [ "xen-blkfront" "xen-fbfront" "xen-netfront" "xen-kbdfront" ];
>     loader.grub = {
>       enable = true;
>       version = 1;
>       extraPerEntryConfig = "root (hd0)";
>       device = "nodev";
>     };
>     extraKernelParams=["root=/dev/xvda" "console=hvc0" "earlyprintk=xen"];
>     kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_3_7;
>   };
>   fileSystems =
>     [ { mountPoint = "/";
>         device = "/dev/xvda";
> 	     options = "noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,barrier=0";
>       }
>     ];
>   swapDevices = [ { device = "/dev/xvdb"; }];
>   ...
>
> Good Luck,
>   Kevin
>
> Malcolm Matalka writes:
>
>> Hello! I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on getting NixOS on Linode?
>> I know there is a wiki page, but it seems outdated.  The Linode docs on
>> running a custom linux distro are also incomplete.
>>
>> I was under the impression I could create a NixOS image on Vbox at home,
>> and then just upload that and run it, but this doesn't seem to be the
>> case.  Could anyone provide a high-level overview of it?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> /Malcolm
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