NixOS installation guide

Introduction

This is an incomplete guide on installing NixOs, using flakes and home-manager.

Be sure to have an ISO image of NixOS, which can be obtained here: https://nixos.org/download/#nixos-iso.

Installation guide

Partitioning your disk

1. Boot the installation medium.
2. Open a terminal.
3. Wipe your disk: $ blkdiscard /dev/<installation disk>.
4. Create root and boot partitions:

Use parted

$ parted <installation disk>
(parted) mklabel gpt

Boot partition

(parted) mkpart
(parted) Partitoin name? boot
(parted) File system type? fat32
(parted) Start? 0%
(parted) End? 2GB
(parted) set 1 esp on
(parted) set 1 boot on

Root partition

(parted) mkpart
(parted) Partitoin name? root
(parted) File system type? btrfs
(parted) Start? 2GB
(parted) End? 100%
(parted) quit

Configure and mount partitions

1. $ mkfs.btrfs /dev/<root partition>
2. $ mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/<boot partition>
3. $ mount /dev/<root partition> /mnt
4. $ mkdir /mnt/boot
5. $ mount /dev/<boot partition> /mnt/boot

Generate and edit config

1. $ sudo nixos-generate-config --root /mnt
2. Edit your configuration: $ nvim /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
3. Checkout your hardware config: $ nvim /mnt/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix
4. Remember to add the following to configuration.nix so that grub works with EFI:

boot.loader.grub.enable = true;
boot.loader.grub.efiSupport = true;
boot.loader.grub.device = "nodev";
boot.loader.efi.canTouchEfiVariables = true;

Note: This is an example of my configuration: https://git.posixlycorrect.com/fabian/desktop_config

Install

1. $ sudo nixos-install
2. Set root password when prompted to do so.
3. Reboot your machine
4. Login as root and set a password for your user: $ passwd <username>
5. Logout and login as your user

Enable flakes and replace your config with your flake

Flake

1. $ mkdir nix
2. Create your $ vim flake.nix
3. $ nixos rebuidl switch

Home manager

1. $ nix repl .

home = homeConfigurations.<configuration name>
home.activationPackage

1. Copy the resulting path and do:
2. $ build <path>
3. ./result/activate