lustrate /ˈlʌstreɪt/ verb.
purify by expiatory sacrifice, ceremonial washing, or some other
ritual action.
- sudo touch /etc/NIXOS_LUSTRATE
⇒ on next reboot, during stage 1, everything but /nix and /boot
is moved to /old-root
- echo "etc/passwd" | sudo tee -a /etc/NIXOS_LUSTRATE
⇒ on next reboot, during stage 1, everything but /nix and /boot
is moved to /old-root; except /etc/passwd is copied back.
Useful for installing NixOS in place on another distro. For instance:
$ nix-env -iE '_: with import <nixpkgs/nixos> { configuration = {}; }; with config.system.build; [ nixos-generate-config manual.manpages ]'
$ sudo mkdir /etc/nixos
$ sudo `which nixos-generate-config`
… edit the configuration files in /etc/nixos using man configuration.nix
if needed
maybe add: users.extraUsers.root.initialHashedPassword = "" ?
… Build the entire NixOS system and link it to the system profile:
$ nix-env -p /nix/var/nix/profiles/system -f '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -A system --set
… If you were using a single user install:
$ sudo chown -R 0.0 /nix
… NixOS is about to take over
$ sudo touch /etc/NIXOS
$ sudo touch /etc/NIXOS_LUSTRATE
… Let's keep the configuration files we just created
$ echo etc/nixos | sudo tee -a /etc/NIXOS_LUSTRATE
$ sudo mv -v /boot /boot.bak &&
sudo /nix/var/nix/profiles/system/bin/switch-to-configuration boot
$ sudo reboot
… NixOS boots, Stage 1 moves all the old distro stuff in /old-root.
The fontconfig-ultimate patches are unmaintained. Since they were
not updated for newer FreeType versions, this removes them and
disables fontconfig-ultimate by default.
This removes our hardcoded presets which weren't updated for quite some time.
Infinality now has new hardcoded presets in freetype, which can be overriden if
desired with environment variables (as before). Accordingly, updated NixOS
module to set the hardcoded preset.
Additionally used a more "right" type for substitutions.
Before commit 54fa0cfe4e, the `redshift`
service was run with the environment variable `DISPLAY` set to `:0`.
Commit 54fa0cfe4e changed this to
instead use the value of the `services.xserver.display` configuration
option in the value of the `DISPLAY` variable. In so doing, no default
value was provided for the case where `services.xserver.display` is
`null`.
While the default value of `services.xserver.display` is `0`, use of
which by the `redshift` module would result in `DISPLAY` again being
set to `:0`, `services.xserver.display` may also be `null`, to which
value it is set by, e.g., the `lightdm` module.
In the case that `services.xserver.display` is `null`, with the change
made in commit 54fa0cfe4e, the `DISPLAY`
variable in the environment of the `redshift` service would be set to
`:` (a single colon), which, according to my personal experience,
would result in —
- the `redshift` service failing to start; and
- systemd repeatedly attempting to restart the `redshift` service,
looping indefinitely, while the hapless `redshift` spews error
messages into the journal.
It can be observed that the malformed value of `DISPLAY` is likely at
fault for this issue by executing the following commands in an
ordinary shell, with a suitable `redshift` executable, and the X11
display not already tinted:
- `redshift -O 2500` — This command should reduce the color
temperature of the display (making it more reddish).
- `DISPLAY=':' redshift -O 6500` — This command should raise the
color temperature back up, were it not for the `DISPLAY`
environment variable being set to `:` for it, which should cause
it to, instead, fail with several error messages.
This commit attempts to fix this issue by having the `DISPLAY`
environment variable for the `redshift` service default to its old
value of `:0` in the case that `services.xserver.display` is `null`.
I have tested this solution on NixOS, albeit without the benefit of a
system with multiple displays.
gdnc is a user process and can't be made into a NixOS module very
easily. It can still be put in the user's login script. According to the
GNUstep documentation it will be started as soon as it is needed.
- 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 ✓
