The use of Nix 2.0 significantly simplifies the installer, since we
can just pass a different store URI (--store /mnt) - it's no longer
needed to set up a chroot environment for the build, and to bootstrap
Nix into the chroot.
Also, commands that need to run in the installation (namely boot
loader installation and setting a root password) are now executed
using nixos-enter.
This also removes the need for nixos-prepare-root since any required
initialisation is done by Nix or by the activation script.
The key distinction I'm drawing is that there's a component that deals
with the store of the machine being built, and another component for
the store building it. The inner part of it assumes nothing from the
builder (doesn't need chroot or root powers) so it can run comfortably
inside a Nix build, as well as nixos-rebuild. I have some upcoming work
that will use that to significantly speed up and streamline image builds
for NixOS, especially on virtualized hosts like EC2, but it's also a
reasonable speedup on native hosts.
This partially reverts commit 0aa7520670.
Fine for rsync to be in system path but we still need the explicit path
in nixos-install in case it is invoked from non-NixOS systems and also
to fix OVA test failure
See also 0aa7520670
cc @edolstra
This reverts commit 582313bafe.
Removing rsync is actually pointless because nixos-install depends on
it. So if it's part of the system closure, we may as well provide it
to users.
Probably with the next Nix release we can drop the use of rsync and
use "nix copy" instead.
- Replace hand-rolled version of nixos-install in make-disk-image by an
actual call to nixos-install
- Required a few cleanups of nixos-install
- nixos-install invokes an activation script which the hand-rolled version
in make-disk-image did not do. We remove /etc/machine-id as that's
a host-specific, impure, output of the activation script
Testing:
nix-build '<nixpkgs/nixos/release.nix>' -A tests.installer.simple passes
Also tried generating an image with:
nix-build -E 'let
pkgs = import <nixpkgs> {};
lib = pkgs.lib;
nixos = import <nixpkgs/nixos> {
configuration = {
fileSystems."/".device = "/dev/disk/by-label/nixos";
boot.loader.grub.devices = [ "/dev/sda" ];
boot.loader.grub.extraEntries = '"''"'
menuentry "Ubuntu" {
insmod ext2
search --set=root --label ubuntu
configfile /boot/grub/grub.cfg
}
'"''"';
};
};
in import <nixpkgs/nixos/lib/make-disk-image.nix> {
inherit pkgs lib;
config = nixos.config;
diskSize = 2000;
partitioned = false;
installBootLoader = false;
}'
Then installed the image:
$ sudo df if=./result/nixos.img of=/dev/sdaX bs=1M
$ sudo resize2fs /dev/disk/by-label/nixos
$ sudo mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
$ sudo mount --rbind /proc /mnt/proc
$ sudo mount --rbind /dev /mnt/dev
$ sudo chroot /mnt /nix/var/nix/profiles/system/bin/switch-to-configuration boot
[ … optionally do something about passwords … ]
and successfully rebooted to that image.
Was doing all this from inside a Ubuntu VM with a single user nix install.
- Fix --no-bootloader which didn't do what it advertised
- Hardcode nixbld GID so that systems which do not have a nixbld user
can still run nixos-install (only with --closure since they can't
build anything)
- Cleanup: get rid of NIX_CONF_DIR(=/tmp)/nix.conf and pass arguments instead
- Cleanup: don't assume that the target system has '<nixpkgs/nixos>' or
'<nixos-config>' to see if config.users.mutableUsers. Instead check if
/var/setuid-wrappers/passwd is there
Installing NixOS now works from a Ubuntu host (using --closure).
nix-build -A tests.installer.simple '<nixpkgs/nixos/release.nix>' succeeds ✓
- Enforce that an option declaration has a "defaultText" if and only if the
type of the option derives from "package", "packageSet" or "nixpkgsConfig"
and if a "default" attribute is defined.
- Enforce that the value of the "example" attribute is wrapped with "literalExample"
if the type of the option derives from "package", "packageSet" or "nixpkgsConfig".
- Warn if a "defaultText" is defined in an option declaration if the type of
the option does not derive from "package", "packageSet" or "nixpkgsConfig".
- Warn if no "type" is defined in an option declaration.
This option requests compatibility with older NixOS releases with
respect to stateful data, in cases where new releases have defaults
that might be incompatible with system state of existing NixOS
deployments. For instance, if we change the default version of
PostgreSQL, existing deployments will break if the new version can't
read databases created by the old version.
So for example, setting
system.stateVersion = "15.07";
requests that options like services.postgresql.package use defaults
corresponding to the 15.07 release branch. Note that
nixos-generate-config emits this option. (In the future, NixOps may
set system.stateVersion to the NixOS release in use when the machine
was created.)
See also #7939 for another motivating example.
This reverts commit 469f22d717, reversing
changes made to 0078bc5d8f.
Conflicts:
nixos/modules/installer/tools/nixos-generate-config.pl
nixos/modules/system/boot/loader/grub/install-grub.pl
nixos/release.nix
nixos/tests/installer.nix
I tried to keep apparently-safe code in conflicts.
Dmidecode fails in our EFI test with the error "SMBIOS entry point
missing". But we don't need dmidecode because we have already have
systemd-detect-virt.
Using pkgs.lib on the spine of module evaluation is problematic
because the pkgs argument depends on the result of module
evaluation. To prevent an infinite recursion, pkgs and some of the
modules are evaluated twice, which is inefficient. Using ‘with lib’
prevents this problem.
