[Nix-dev] Some NixOS beginner questions...

[Ben Franksen]

Hi Everyone

I am new to NixOS (but not to Linux), just installed the stable (13.10) 
version and have a number of questions/comments.

(1) Installation with USB stick failed during the first reboot with "waiting 
for /dev/sdb1 to appear.....". (Also, the 'boot form harddisk' entry in the 
bootloader menu did not exist.) I could install fine after I burned the 
image on a CD. It would be nice if installation from a USB stick could be 
made to work.

(2) It seems impossible to install NixOS w/o installing the boot loader. I 
did not want to overwrite what's in my MBR because I have another system 
(kubuntu) on the machine and did not want to loose my boot menu. I tried 
installation to some partition but that also failed for various reasons. I 
know, this is a general problem with grub2, not partcular to NixOS. Anyway, 
after many failed attempts my solution was to create a btrfs on an unused 
partition, adding a chainloader entry to my kubuntu-maintained boot menu. A 
hint how to do that (in the NixOS manual or on the wiki) would be nice, I 
guess experimental installation of NixOS side-by-side with an existing 
system is common, considering the experimental status of NixOS.

(3) I love the declarative approach to system configuration. However, for a 
newcomer it is hard to find out how to configure his favorite packages. What 
options are there and how can I set them? Is looking at the 'sources' (for 
the package's nix expressions) the only way? Related question: I tried to 
put pkgs.kdepim into environment.systemPackages, which failed for no 
apparent reason. Then I stumbled (really, by accident) over a nix snippet 
where it said pkgs.kde4.<some-kde-subpackage> and indeed adding the .kde4 
worked. How can I find out how packages are organised in the pkgs nix 
expression?

(4) How do I fix something if it is broken? Note I don't want to upgrade my 
whole NixOS configuration to the unstable branch (as all the documentation 
suggests), just make one or two fixes in certain packages (e.g. the nedit 
package is currently broken, when starting the binary it crashes with some 
X11 bad opcode error). I expected the nixpkgs repository to have a 'stable' 
branch so I could check that out and work from there but such a branch seems 
not to exist. How else can I replace/fix/change the nix expression for a 
single package, leaving the rest of the system as is?

Cheers
Ben
-- 
"Make it so they have to reboot after every typo." -- Scott Adams