Installing NixOSNixOS can be installed on BIOS or UEFI systems. The procedure
for a UEFI installation is by and large the same as a BIOS installation. The differences are mentioned in the steps that follow.Boot from the CD.UEFI systemsYou should boot the live CD in UEFI mode
(consult your specific hardware's documentation for instructions).
You may find the rEFInd boot
manager useful.The CD contains a basic NixOS installation. (It
also contains Memtest86+, useful if you want to test new hardware).
When it’s finished booting, it should have detected most of your
hardware.The NixOS manual is available on virtual console 8
(press Alt+F8 to access) or by running nixos-help.
You get logged in as root
(with empty password).If you downloaded the graphical ISO image, you can
run systemctl start display-manager to start KDE. If you
want to continue on the terminal, you can use
loadkeys to switch to your preferred keyboard layout.
(We even provide neo2 via loadkeys de neo!)The boot process should have brought up networking (check
ip a). Networking is necessary for the
installer, since it will download lots of stuff (such as source
tarballs or Nixpkgs channel binaries). It’s best if you have a DHCP
server on your network. Otherwise configure networking manually
using ifconfig.To manually configure the network on the graphical installer,
first disable network-manager with
systemctl stop network-manager.To manually configure the wifi on the minimal installer, run
wpa_supplicant -B -i interface -c <(wpa_passphrase 'SSID' 'key').If you would like to continue the installation from a different
machine you need to activate the SSH daemon via systemctl start sshd.
In order to be able to login you also need to set a password for
root using passwd.The NixOS installer doesn’t do any partitioning or
formatting yet, so you need to do that yourself. Use the following
commands:
For partitioning:
fdisk.
# fdisk /dev/sda # (or whatever device you want to install on)
-- for UEFI systems only
> n # (create a new partition for /boot)
> 3 # (make it a partition number 3)
> # (press enter to accept the default)
> +512M # (the size of the UEFI boot partition)
> t # (change the partition type ...)
> 3 # (... of the boot partition ...)
> 1 # (... to 'UEFI System')
-- for BIOS or UEFI systems
> n # (create a new partition for /swap)
> 2 # (make it a partition number 2)
> # (press enter to accept the default)
> +8G # (the size of the swap partition, set to whatever you like)
> n # (create a new partition for /)
> 1 # (make it a partition number 1)
> # (press enter to accept the default)
> # (press enter to accept the default and use the rest of the remaining space)
> a # (make the partition bootable)
> x # (enter expert mode)
> f # (fix up the partition ordering)
> r # (exit expert mode)
> w # (write the partition table to disk and exit)For initialising Ext4 partitions:
mkfs.ext4. It is recommended that you assign a
unique symbolic label to the file system using the option
, since this
makes the file system configuration independent from device
changes. For example:
# mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/sda1For creating swap partitions:
mkswap. Again it’s recommended to assign a
label to the swap partition: . For example:
# mkswap -L swap /dev/sda2UEFI systemsFor creating boot partitions:
mkfs.fat. Again it’s recommended to assign a
label to the boot partition: . For example:
# mkfs.fat -F 32 -L boot /dev/sda3For creating LVM volumes, the LVM commands, e.g.,
# pvcreate /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
# vgcreate MyVolGroup /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
# lvcreate --size 2G --name bigdisk MyVolGroup
# lvcreate --size 1G --name smalldisk MyVolGroupFor creating software RAID devices, use
mdadm.Mount the target file system on which NixOS should
be installed on /mnt, e.g.
# mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
UEFI systemsMount the boot file system on /mnt/boot, e.g.
# mount /dev/disk/by-label/boot /mnt/boot
If your machine has a limited amount of memory, you
may want to activate swap devices now (swapon
device). The installer (or
rather, the build actions that it may spawn) may need quite a bit of
RAM, depending on your configuration.
# swapon /dev/sda2You now need to create a file
/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix that
specifies the intended configuration of the system. This is
because NixOS has a declarative configuration
model: you create or edit a description of the desired
configuration of your system, and then NixOS takes care of making
it happen. The syntax of the NixOS configuration file is
described in , while a
list of available configuration options appears in . A minimal example is shown in .The command nixos-generate-config can
generate an initial configuration file for you:
# nixos-generate-config --root /mnt
You should then edit
/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix to suit your
needs:
# nano /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
If you’re using the graphical ISO image, other editors may be
available (such as vim). If you have network
access, you can also install other editors — for instance, you can
install Emacs by running nix-env -i
emacs.BIOS systemsYou must set the option
to specify on which disk
the GRUB boot loader is to be installed. Without it, NixOS cannot
boot.UEFI systemsYou must set the option
to true.
nixos-generate-config should do this automatically for new
configurations when booted in
UEFI mode.You may want to look at the options starting with
and
as well.
If there are other operating systems running on the machine before
installing NixOS, the
option can be set to
true to automatically add them to the grub menu.Another critical option is ,
specifying the file systems that need to be mounted by NixOS.
However, you typically don’t need to set it yourself, because
nixos-generate-config sets it automatically in
/mnt/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix
from your currently mounted file systems. (The configuration file
hardware-configuration.nix is included from
configuration.nix and will be overwritten by
future invocations of nixos-generate-config;
thus, you generally should not modify it.)Depending on your hardware configuration or type of
file system, you may need to set the option
to include the kernel
modules that are necessary for mounting the root file system,
otherwise the installed system will not be able to boot. (If this
happens, boot from the CD again, mount the target file system on
/mnt, fix
/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix and rerun
nixos-install.) In most cases,
nixos-generate-config will figure out the
required modules.Do the installation:
# nixos-install
Cross fingers. If this fails due to a temporary problem (such as
a network issue while downloading binaries from the NixOS binary
cache), you can just re-run nixos-install.
Otherwise, fix your configuration.nix and
then re-run nixos-install.As the last step, nixos-install will ask
you to set the password for the root user, e.g.
setting root password...
Enter new UNIX password: ***
Retype new UNIX password: ***
To prevent the password prompt, set = false; in
configuration.nix, which allows unattended installation
necessary in automation.
If everything went well:
# rebootYou should now be able to boot into the installed NixOS. The
GRUB boot menu shows a list of available
configurations (initially just one). Every time you
change the NixOS configuration (see Changing Configuration ), a
new item is added to the menu. This allows you to easily roll back
to a previous configuration if something goes wrong.You should log in and change the root
password with passwd.You’ll probably want to create some user accounts as well,
which can be done with useradd:
$ useradd -c 'Eelco Dolstra' -m eelco
$ passwd eelcoYou may also want to install some software. For instance,
$ nix-env -qa \*
shows what packages are available, and
$ nix-env -i w3m
install the w3m browser.To summarise, shows a
typical sequence of commands for installing NixOS on an empty hard
drive (here /dev/sda). shows a corresponding configuration Nix expression.Commands for Installing NixOS on <filename>/dev/sda</filename>
# fdisk /dev/sda # (or whatever device you want to install on)
-- for UEFI systems only
> n # (create a new partition for /boot)
> 3 # (make it a partition number 3)
> # (press enter to accept the default)
> +512M # (the size of the UEFI boot partition)
> t # (change the partition type ...)
> 3 # (... of the boot partition ...)
> 1 # (... to 'UEFI System')
-- for BIOS or UEFI systems
> n # (create a new partition for /swap)
> 2 # (make it a partition number 2)
> # (press enter to accept the default)
> +8G # (the size of the swap partition)
> n # (create a new partition for /)
> 1 # (make it a partition number 1)
> # (press enter to accept the default)
> # (press enter to accept the default and use the rest of the remaining space)
> a # (make the partition bootable)
> x # (enter expert mode)
> f # (fix up the partition ordering)
> r # (exit expert mode)
> w # (write the partition table to disk and exit)
# mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/sda1
# mkswap -L swap /dev/sda2
# swapon /dev/sda2
# mkfs.fat -F 32 -L boot /dev/sda3 # (for UEFI systems only)
# mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
# mount /dev/disk/by-label/boot /mnt/boot # (for UEFI systems only)
# nixos-generate-config --root /mnt
# nano /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
# nixos-install
# rebootNixOS Configuration
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{
imports =
[ # Include the results of the hardware scan.
./hardware-configuration.nix
];
= "/dev/sda"; # (for BIOS systems only) = true; # (for UEFI systems only)
# Note: setting fileSystems is generally not
# necessary, since nixos-generate-config figures them out
# automatically in hardware-configuration.nix.
#fileSystems."/".device = "/dev/disk/by-label/nixos";
# Enable the OpenSSH server.
services.sshd.enable = true;
}