unable to upgrade declarative nixos container.

[mogorman]

I have a container defined in my nixos configuration.conf

  containers.test = {
    autoStart = true;
    privateNetwork = true;
    hostAddress = "10.137.137.1";
    localAddress = "10.137.137.3";
    config = { configs, pkgs, ... }: {
      system.stateVersion = "unstable";
      system.defaultChannel = "https://nixos.org/channels/unstable";
      boot.isContainer = true;
      networking.hostName = "test";
      networking.useDHCP = false;
      environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ bash hello ];
    };
  };

I have tried to make the container upgrade from 15.09 to unstable but it does not seem to work. I also tried adding the channel and upgrading from within the container but this also fails because there is not a configuration.nix in the container.

What is the proper way to do this. My goal is to run unstable containers inside of my stable nixos installation

[lucabrunox]

Containers are updated with systemctl reload, did do this? Also please paste any error "does not seem to work" is not helpful.

[mogorman]

sorry if i wasn't clear enough. my root NixOS environment is 15.09. I made a container declaratively to run gitlab. It works great. I want to take said container and make it follow the unstable branch instead of the stable branch. My goal is to be able to run nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade and have it upgrade. I also tried to run the nixos-rebuild switch from with in my container this does not work as there is not a /etc/nix/configuration.nix inside of the container because i created it declaratively.

[danbst]

This should be possible after #15967
Also, because of #16959 you can nix-env -iA nixpkgs.nixos-container and recreate the container.

I guess system.defaultChannel = "https://nixos.org/channels/unstable"; doesn't work in containers. Also, see #3021

[mogorman]

That is awesome. I will try to get that running as soon as i can. thank you for update.

[mogorman]

this did fix my issue. sorry didnt close earlier