nixpkgs/doc/manual/installation.xml

<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
         xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">

<title>Installation</title>


<!--===============================================================-->

<section>

<title>Building the installation CD</title>

<para>Instead of building an installation CD, you could just download
one from <link xlink:href="http://nix.cs.uu.nl/nixos/"/>.  If you want
(or need) to build it yourself:

<orderedlist>

  <listitem><para>Make sure that you have a <emphasis>very</emphasis>
  recent pre-release version of Nix installed (<link
  xlink:href="http://nix.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/nix-unstable-latest/"/>).
  The NixOS Nix expressions frequently use bleeding-edge features.  If
  you get any kind of expression evaluation error, try to upgrade your
  Nix.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>Optional but strongly recommended (and currently
  <emphasis>required</emphasis> for building the
  <literal>x86_64</literal> ISO): subscribe/pull from the Nixpkgs
  channel to speed up building, i.e.,

<screen>
$ nix-channel --add http://nix.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/channels-v3/nixpkgs-unstable
$ nix-channel --update</screen>

  </para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>Check out NixOS from <link
  xlink:href="https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/repos/trace/nixos/trunk"/> as
  <literal>nixos</literal>.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>If you don’t already have Nixpkgs checkout, Check
  out Nixpkgs from <link
  xlink:href="https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/repos/trace/nixos/trunk"/> as
  <literal>nixpkgs</literal>.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>In the directory <literal>nixos</literal>, make a
  symbolic link <literal>pkgs</literal> to the <literal>pkgs</literal>
  directory of the Nixpkgs tree, e.g.,

<screen>
$ ln -s nixpkgs/pkgs nixos/</screen>

  </para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>Build the ISO image:

<screen>
$ nix-build configuration/rescue-cd.nix -A rescueCD</screen>

  If everything goes well, you’ll end up with an ISO image in
  <filename>./result/iso/nixos.iso</filename>.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>Burn the ISO image
  <filename>./result/iso/nixos.iso</filename> onto a CD or DVD or
  attach it to a CD-ROM drive in VMware.</para></listitem>

</orderedlist>
  
</para>

</section>


<!--===============================================================-->

<section>

<title>Installation</title>

<orderedlist>

  <listitem><para>Boot from the CD.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>The CD contains a basic NixOS installation.  When
  it’s finished booting, it should have detected most of your hardware
  and brought up networking (check <command>ifconfig</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 manually.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>Login as <literal>root</literal>, empty
  password.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>The NixOS installer doesn’t do any partitioning or
  formatting yet, so you need to that yourself.  Use the following
  commands:

  <itemizedlist>

    <listitem><para>For partitioning:
    <command>fdisk</command>.</para></listitem>
    
    <listitem><para>For initialising Ext2/Ext3 partitions:
    <command>mke2fs</command>.  Ext3 is recommended; use the
    <option>-j</option> to create a journalled file system.  It is
    also recommended that you assign a unique symbolic label to the
    file system using the option <option>-L
    <replaceable>label</replaceable></option>.  This will make the
    file system configuration independent from device
    changes.</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>.</para></listitem>
    
    <listitem><para>For creating LVM volumes, the LVM commands, e.g.,

<screen>
$ pvcreate /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
$ vgcreate MyVolGroup /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
$ lvcreate --size 2G --name bigdisk MyVolGroup 
$ lvcreate --size 1G --name smalldisk MyVolGroup</screen>

    Possibly you’ll need to do <userinput>initctl start
    lvm</userinput> after this (TODO: check whether this is
    needed).</para></listitem>

    <listitem><para>For creating software RAID devices:
    <command>mdadm</command>.</para></listitem>

    <listitem><para>Mount the target file system on
    <filename>/mnt</filename>.</para></listitem>

    <listitem><para>The installation is declarative; you need to write
    a description of the configuration that you want to be built and
    activated.  The configuration is specified in a Nix expression and
    should be stored in
    <filename>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename>.  See
    <filename>/etc/nixos/nixos/configuration/examples</filename> for
    example machine configurations.  You can copy and edit one of
    those (e.g., copy
    <filename>/etc/nixos/nixos/configuration/examples/basic.nix</filename>
    to <filename>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename>).  See <xref
    linkend="ch-options"/> for a list of the available configuration
    options.  The text editor <command>nano</command> is
    available.</para>

    <para>In particular you need to specify a root file system in
    <option>fileSystems</option> and the target device for the Grub
    boot loader in <option>boot.grubDevice</option>.</para>

    <para>More examples of NixOS configurations for some actual
    machines can be found at <link
    xlink:href="https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/repos/trace/configurations/trunk/"/>.</para>

    </listitem>

    <listitem><para>Do the installation:

<screen>
$ nixos-install</screen>

    Cross fingers.</para></listitem>

    <listitem><para>If everything went well:

<screen>
$ reboot</screen>

    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, a new item appears in the menu.
    This allows you to go back easily to another configuration if
    something goes wrong.</para>

    <para>You should log in and change the <literal>root</literal>
    password with <command>passwd</command>.</para></listitem>

  </itemizedlist>

  </para></listitem>
    
</orderedlist>

</section>



<!--===============================================================-->

<section xml:id="sec-changing-config">

<title>Changing the configuration</title>

<para>The file <filename>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</filename>
contains the current configuration of your machine.  Whenever you’ve
changed something to that file, or to the NixOS/Nixpkgs sources in
<filename>/etc/nixos/nixos</filename> and
<filename>/etc/nixos/nixpkgs</filename>, respectively, you should do

<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch</screen>

to build the new configuration, make it the default configuration for
booting, and try to effect the configuration in the running system
(e.g., by restarting system services).</para>

<para>You can also do 

<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild test</screen>

to build the configuration and switch the running system to it, but
without making it the boot default.  So if (say) the configuration
locks up your machine, you can just reboot to get back to a working
configuration.</para>

<para>There is also 

<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild boot</screen>

to build the configuration and make it the boot default, but not
switch to it now (so it will only take effect after the next
reboot).</para>

<para>Finally, you can do 

<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild build</screen>

to build the configuration but nothing more.  This is useful to see
whether everything compiles cleanly.</para>

</section>



<!--===============================================================-->

<section>

<title>Keeping NixOS up to date</title>

<para>The currently best way to keep your NixOS installation up to
date is to track the NixOS Subversion repository.  You should replace
the static NixOS/Nixpkgs sources installed in
<filename>/etc/nixos</filename> with a Subversion checkout.  The
program <command>nixos-checkout</command> does that for you (and it
also installs Subversion into your current profile).</para>

<para>To build the latest and greatest, do

<screen>
$ svn up /etc/nixos/nixos
$ svn up /etc/nixos/nixpkgs
$ nixos-rebuild switch</screen>

(Or instead of <literal>switch</literal>, use any of the alternatives
shown in <xref linkend="sec-changing-config"/>.)</para>


</section>




</chapter>