Without configuring the block size a default of 512 bytes is used, which can
slow down the transfer speed massively.
In a test I've done with a semi-decent USB stick, I only get a transfer speed
of around 180 KB/sec when not specifying the block size but see 27 MB/sec when
setting the block size to 1 MB. This makes the transfer of the minimal
installation ISO take half a minute instead of an hour.
The command in example is expected to be run from nixpkgs checkout, but
there's no explanation of this. Let's just use system nixpkgs: most
users will have it just working and those who use git checkouts will
figure it out.
The wpa_supplicant service in the NixOS installer is unusable because
the control socket is disabled and /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf ignored.
The manual currently recommends manually starting the daemon and using
wpa_passphrase, but this requires figuring out the interface name,
driver and only works for WPA2 personal networks.
By enabling the control socket, instead, a user can configure the
network via wpa_cli (or wpa_gui in the graphical installer), which
support more advanced network configurations.
The essential commands from the NixOS installer as a package
With this package, you get the commands like nixos-generate-config and
nixos-install that you would otherwise only find on a NixOS system, such
as an installer image.
This way, you can install NixOS using a machine that only has Nix.
It also includes the manpages, which are important because the commands
rely on those for providing --help.
We're really setting users up on the wrong path if we tell them to
nix-env -iA immediately after installing. Instead, let's just
reassure them that installing software will be covered in due course
in the manual, to encourage them to keep reading.
Right now the UX for installing NixOS on a headless system is very bad.
To enable sshd without physical steps users have to have either physical
access or need to be very knowledge-able to figure out how to modify the
installation image by hand to put an `sshd.service` symlink in the
right directory in /nix/store. This is in particular a problem on ARM
SBCs (single board computer) but also other hardware where network is
the only meaningful way to access the hardware.
This commit enables sshd by default. This does not give anyone access to
the NixOS installer since by default. There is no user with a non-empty
password or key. It makes it easy however to add ssh keys to the
installation image (usb stick, sd-card on arm boards) by simply mounting
it and adding a keys to `/root/.ssh/authorized_keys`.
Importantly this should not require nix/nixos on the machine that
prepare the installation device and even feasiable on non-linux systems
by using ext4 third party drivers.
Potential new threats: Since this enables sshd by default a
potential bug in openssh could lead to remote code execution. Openssh
has a very good track-record over the last 20 years, which makes it
far more likely that Linux itself would have a remote code execution
vulnerability. It is trusted by millions of servers on many operating
systems to be exposed to the internet by default.
Co-authored-by: Samuel Dionne-Riel <samuel@dionne-riel.com>
With 'set 3 boot on' the error 'file system "/boot" is not a FAT EFI
system partition (ESP) file system' occurs when running
"nixos-install" during the basic installation (tested in in a
VirtualBox VM).
Virtualbox recommends VMSVGA for Linux guests.
It is also currently the only one supporting 3D acceleration
and it works out of the box with NixOS and auto screen resizing.
