installing.xml

<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
            xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
            xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
            version="5.0"
            xml:id="sec-installation">
 <title>Installing NixOS</title>
 <section xml:id="sec-installation-booting">
  <title>Booting the system</title>

  <para>
   NixOS 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.
  </para>

  <para>
   The installation media can be burned to a CD, or now more commonly, "burned"
   to a USB drive (see <xref linkend="sec-booting-from-usb"/>).
  </para>

  <para>
   The installation media contains a basic NixOS installation. When it’s
   finished booting, it should have detected most of your hardware.
  </para>

  <para>
   The NixOS manual is available on virtual console 8 (press Alt+F8 to access)
   or by running <command>nixos-help</command>.
  </para>

  <para>
   You are logged-in automatically as <literal>root</literal>. (The
   <literal>root</literal> user account has an empty password.)
  </para>

  <para>
   If you downloaded the graphical ISO image, you can run <command>systemctl
   start display-manager</command> to start KDE. If you want to continue on the
   terminal, you can use <command>loadkeys</command> to switch to your
   preferred keyboard layout. (We even provide neo2 via <command>loadkeys de
   neo</command>!)
  </para>

  <section xml:id="sec-installation-booting-networking">
   <title>Networking in the installer</title>

   <para>
    The boot process should have brought up networking (check <command>ip
    a</command>). 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 <command>ifconfig</command>.
   </para>

   <para>
    To manually configure the network on the graphical installer, first disable
    network-manager with <command>systemctl stop network-manager</command>.
   </para>

   <para>
    To manually configure the wifi on the minimal installer, run
    <command>wpa_supplicant -B -i interface -c &lt;(wpa_passphrase 'SSID'
    'key')</command>.
   </para>

   <para>
    If you would like to continue the installation from a different machine you
    need to activate the SSH daemon via <literal>systemctl start
    sshd</literal>. In order to be able to login you also need to set a
    password for <literal>root</literal> using <literal>passwd</literal>.
   </para>
  </section>
 </section>
 <section xml:id="sec-installation-partitioning">
  <title>Partitioning and formatting</title>

  <para>
   The NixOS installer doesn’t do any partitioning or formatting, so you need
   to do that yourself.
  </para>

  <para>
   The NixOS installer ships with multiple partitioning tools. The examples
   below use <command>parted</command>, but also provides
   <command>fdisk</command>, <command>gdisk</command>,
   <command>cfdisk</command>, and <command>cgdisk</command>.
  </para>

  <para>
   The recommended partition scheme differs depending if the computer uses
   <emphasis>Legacy Boot</emphasis> or <emphasis>UEFI</emphasis>.
  </para>

  <section xml:id="sec-installation-partitioning-UEFI">
   <title>UEFI (GPT)</title>

   <para>
    Here's an example partition scheme for UEFI, using
    <filename>/dev/sda</filename> as the device.
    <note>
     <para>
      You can safely ignore <command>parted</command>'s informational message
      about needing to update /etc/fstab.
     </para>
    </note>
   </para>

   <para>
    <orderedlist>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       Create a <emphasis>GPT</emphasis> partition table.
<screen language="commands"># parted /dev/sda -- mklabel gpt</screen>
      </para>
     </listitem>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       Add the <emphasis>root</emphasis> partition. This will fill the disk
       except for the end part, where the swap will live, and the space left in
       front (512MiB) which will be used by the boot partition.
<screen language="commands"># parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary 512MiB -8GiB</screen>
      </para>
     </listitem>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       Next, add a <emphasis>swap</emphasis> partition. The size required will
       vary according to needs, here a 8GiB one is created.
<screen language="commands"># parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary linux-swap -8GiB 100%</screen>
       <note>
        <para>
         The swap partition size rules are no different than for other Linux
         distributions.
        </para>
       </note>
      </para>
     </listitem>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       Finally, the <emphasis>boot</emphasis> partition. NixOS by default uses
       the ESP (EFI system partition) as its <emphasis>/boot</emphasis>
       partition. It uses the initially reserved 512MiB at the start of the
       disk.
<screen language="commands"># parted /dev/sda -- mkpart ESP fat32 1MiB 512MiB
# parted /dev/sda -- set 3 boot on</screen>
      </para>
     </listitem>
    </orderedlist>
   </para>

   <para>
    Once complete, you can follow with
    <xref linkend="sec-installation-partitioning-formatting"/>.
   </para>
  </section>

  <section xml:id="sec-installation-partitioning-MBR">
   <title>Legacy Boot (MBR)</title>

   <para>
    Here's an example partition scheme for Legacy Boot, using
    <filename>/dev/sda</filename> as the device.
    <note>
     <para>
      You can safely ignore <command>parted</command>'s informational message
      about needing to update /etc/fstab.
     </para>
    </note>
   </para>

   <para>
    <orderedlist>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       Create a <emphasis>MBR</emphasis> partition table.
<screen language="commands"># parted /dev/sda -- mklabel msdos</screen>
      </para>
     </listitem>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       Add the <emphasis>root</emphasis> partition. This will fill the the disk
       except for the end part, where the swap will live.
<screen language="commands"># parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary 1MiB -8GiB</screen>
      </para>
     </listitem>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       Finally, add a <emphasis>swap</emphasis> partition. The size required
       will vary according to needs, here a 8GiB one is created.
<screen language="commands"># parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary linux-swap -8GiB 100%</screen>
       <note>
        <para>
         The swap partition size rules are no different than for other Linux
         distributions.
        </para>
       </note>
      </para>
     </listitem>
    </orderedlist>
   </para>

   <para>
    Once complete, you can follow with
    <xref linkend="sec-installation-partitioning-formatting"/>.
   </para>
  </section>

  <section xml:id="sec-installation-partitioning-formatting">
   <title>Formatting</title>

   <para>
    Use the following commands:
    <itemizedlist>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       For initialising Ext4 partitions: <command>mkfs.ext4</command>. It is
       recommended that you assign a unique symbolic label to the file system
       using the option <option>-L <replaceable>label</replaceable></option>,
       since this makes the file system configuration independent from device
       changes. For example:
<screen>
# mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/sda1</screen>
      </para>
     </listitem>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       For creating swap partitions: <command>mkswap</command>. Again it’s
       recommended to assign a label to the swap partition: <option>-L
       <replaceable>label</replaceable></option>. For example:
<screen>
# mkswap -L swap /dev/sda2</screen>
      </para>
     </listitem>
     <listitem>
      <variablelist>
       <varlistentry>
        <term>
         UEFI systems
        </term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          For creating boot partitions: <command>mkfs.fat</command>. Again
          it’s recommended to assign a label to the boot partition:
          <option>-n <replaceable>label</replaceable></option>. For example:
<screen>
# mkfs.fat -F 32 -n boot /dev/sda3</screen>
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>
      </variablelist>
     </listitem>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       For creating LVM volumes, the LVM commands, e.g.,
       <command>pvcreate</command>, <command>vgcreate</command>, and
       <command>lvcreate</command>.
      </para>
     </listitem>
     <listitem>
      <para>
       For creating software RAID devices, use <command>mdadm</command>.
      </para>
     </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>
   </para>
  </section>
 </section>
 <section xml:id="sec-installation-installing">
  <title>Installing</title>

  <orderedlist>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Mount the target file system on which NixOS should be installed on
     <filename>/mnt</filename>, e.g.
<screen>
# mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
</screen>
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <variablelist>
     <varlistentry>
      <term>
       UEFI systems
      </term>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        Mount the boot file system on <filename>/mnt/boot</filename>, e.g.
<screen>
# mkdir -p /mnt/boot
# mount /dev/disk/by-label/boot /mnt/boot
</screen>
       </para>
      </listitem>
     </varlistentry>
    </variablelist>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     If your machine has a limited amount of memory, you may want to activate
     swap devices now (<command>swapon
     <replaceable>device</replaceable></command>). The installer (or rather,
     the build actions that it may spawn) may need quite a bit of RAM,
     depending on your configuration.
<screen>
# swapon /dev/sda2</screen>
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     You now need to create a file
     <filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename> that specifies the
     intended configuration of the system. This is because NixOS has a
     <emphasis>declarative</emphasis> 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 <xref linkend="sec-configuration-syntax"/>, while a list
     of available configuration options appears in
     <xref
    linkend="ch-options"/>. A minimal example is shown in
     <xref
    linkend="ex-config"/>.
    </para>
    <para>
     The command <command>nixos-generate-config</command> can generate an
     initial configuration file for you:
<screen>
# nixos-generate-config --root /mnt</screen>
     You should then edit <filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename>
     to suit your needs:
<screen>
# nano /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
</screen>
     If you’re using the graphical ISO image, other editors may be available
     (such as <command>vim</command>). If you have network access, you can also
     install other editors — for instance, you can install Emacs by running
     <literal>nix-env -i emacs</literal>.
    </para>
    <variablelist>
     <varlistentry>
      <term>
       BIOS systems
      </term>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        You <emphasis>must</emphasis> set the option
        <xref linkend="opt-boot.loader.grub.device"/> to specify on which disk
        the GRUB boot loader is to be installed. Without it, NixOS cannot boot.
       </para>
      </listitem>
     </varlistentry>
     <varlistentry>
      <term>
       UEFI systems
      </term>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        You <emphasis>must</emphasis> set the option
        <xref linkend="opt-boot.loader.systemd-boot.enable"/> to
        <literal>true</literal>. <command>nixos-generate-config</command>
        should do this automatically for new configurations when booted in UEFI
        mode.
       </para>
       <para>
        You may want to look at the options starting with
        <option><link linkend="opt-boot.loader.efi.canTouchEfiVariables">boot.loader.efi</link></option>
        and
        <option><link linkend="opt-boot.loader.systemd-boot.enable">boot.loader.systemd</link></option>
        as well.
       </para>
      </listitem>
     </varlistentry>
    </variablelist>
    <para>
     If there are other operating systems running on the machine before
     installing NixOS, the <xref linkend="opt-boot.loader.grub.useOSProber"/>
     option can be set to <literal>true</literal> to automatically add them to
     the grub menu.
    </para>
    <para>
     Another critical option is <option>fileSystems</option>, specifying the
     file systems that need to be mounted by NixOS. However, you typically
     don’t need to set it yourself, because
     <command>nixos-generate-config</command> sets it automatically in
     <filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix</filename> from your
     currently mounted file systems. (The configuration file
     <filename>hardware-configuration.nix</filename> is included from
     <filename>configuration.nix</filename> and will be overwritten by future
     invocations of <command>nixos-generate-config</command>; thus, you
     generally should not modify it.)
    </para>
    <note>
     <para>
      Depending on your hardware configuration or type of file system, you may
      need to set the option <option>boot.initrd.kernelModules</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 installation media again, mount the target file
      system on <filename>/mnt</filename>, fix
      <filename>/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename> and rerun
      <filename>nixos-install</filename>.) In most cases,
      <command>nixos-generate-config</command> will figure out the required
      modules.
     </para>
    </note>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Do the installation:
<screen>
# nixos-install</screen>
     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 <command>nixos-install</command>. Otherwise, fix your
     <filename>configuration.nix</filename> and then re-run
     <command>nixos-install</command>.
    </para>
    <para>
     As the last step, <command>nixos-install</command> will ask you to set the
     password for the <literal>root</literal> user, e.g.
<screen>
setting root password...
Enter new UNIX password: ***
Retype new UNIX password: ***</screen>
     <note>
      <para>
       For unattended installations, it is possible to use
       <command>nixos-install --no-root-passwd</command> in order to disable
       the password prompt entirely.
      </para>
     </note>
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     If everything went well:
<screen>
# reboot</screen>
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     You should now be able to boot into the installed NixOS. The GRUB boot
     menu shows a list of <emphasis>available configurations</emphasis>
     (initially just one). Every time you change the NixOS configuration (see
     <link
        linkend="sec-changing-config">Changing Configuration</link>
     ), a new item is added to the menu. This allows you to easily roll back to
     a previous configuration if something goes wrong.
    </para>
    <para>
     You should log in and change the <literal>root</literal> password with
     <command>passwd</command>.
    </para>
    <para>
     You’ll probably want to create some user accounts as well, which can be
     done with <command>useradd</command>:
<screen>
$ useradd -c 'Eelco Dolstra' -m eelco
$ passwd eelco</screen>
    </para>
    <para>
     You may also want to install some software. For instance,
<screen>
$ nix-env -qa \*</screen>
     shows what packages are available, and
<screen>
$ nix-env -i w3m</screen>
     install the <literal>w3m</literal> browser.
    </para>
   </listitem>
  </orderedlist>
 </section>
 <section xml:id="sec-installation-summary">
  <title>Installation summary</title>

  <para>
   To summarise, <xref linkend="ex-install-sequence" /> shows a typical
   sequence of commands for installing NixOS on an empty hard drive (here
   <filename>/dev/sda</filename>). <xref linkend="ex-config"
/> shows a
   corresponding configuration Nix expression.
  </para>

  <example xml:id="ex-partition-scheme-MBR">
   <title>Example partition schemes for NixOS on <filename>/dev/sda</filename> (MBR)</title>
<screen language="commands">
# parted /dev/sda -- mklabel msdos
# parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary 1MiB -8GiB
# parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary linux-swap -8GiB 100%</screen>
  </example>

  <example xml:id="ex-partition-scheme-UEFI">
   <title>Example partition schemes for NixOS on <filename>/dev/sda</filename> (UEFI)</title>
<screen language="commands">
# parted /dev/sda -- mklabel gpt
# parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary 512MiB -8GiB
# parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary linux-swap -8GiB 100%
# parted /dev/sda -- mkpart ESP fat32 1MiB 512MiB
# parted /dev/sda -- set 3 boot on</screen>
  </example>

  <example xml:id="ex-install-sequence">
   <title>Commands for Installing NixOS on <filename>/dev/sda</filename></title>
   <para>
    With a partitioned disk.
<screen language="commands">
# mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/sda1
# mkswap -L swap /dev/sda2
# swapon /dev/sda2
# mkfs.fat -F 32 -n boot /dev/sda3        # <lineannotation>(for UEFI systems only)</lineannotation>
# mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
# mkdir -p /mnt/boot                      # <lineannotation>(for UEFI systems only)</lineannotation>
# mount /dev/disk/by-label/boot /mnt/boot # <lineannotation>(for UEFI systems only)</lineannotation>
# nixos-generate-config --root /mnt
# nano /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
# nixos-install
# reboot</screen>
   </para>
  </example>

  <example xml:id='ex-config'>
   <title>NixOS Configuration</title>
<screen>
{ config, pkgs, ... }: {
  imports = [
    # Include the results of the hardware scan.
    ./hardware-configuration.nix
  ];

  <xref linkend="opt-boot.loader.grub.device"/> = "/dev/sda";   # <lineannotation>(for BIOS systems only)</lineannotation>
  <xref linkend="opt-boot.loader.systemd-boot.enable"/> = true; # <lineannotation>(for UEFI systems only)</lineannotation>

  # Note: setting fileSystems is generally not
  # necessary, since nixos-generate-config figures them out
  # automatically in hardware-configuration.nix.
  #<link linkend="opt-fileSystems._name__.device">fileSystems."/".device</link> = "/dev/disk/by-label/nixos";

  # Enable the OpenSSH server.
  services.sshd.enable = true;
}
  </screen>
  </example>
 </section>
 <section xml:id="sec-installation-additional-notes">
  <title>Additional installation notes</title>

  <xi:include href="installing-usb.xml" />

  <xi:include href="installing-pxe.xml" />

  <xi:include href="installing-virtualbox-guest.xml" />

  <xi:include href="installing-from-other-distro.xml" />

  <xi:include href="installing-behind-a-proxy.xml" />
 </section>
</chapter>