Setting nixosVersion to something custom is useful for meaningful GRUB
menus and /nix/store paths, but actuallly changing it rebulids the
whole system path (because of `nixos-version` script and manual
pages). Also, changing it is not a particularly good idea because you
can then be differentitated from other NixOS users by a lot of
programs that read /etc/os-release.
This patch introduces an alternative option that does all you want
from nixosVersion, but rebuilds only the very top system level and
/etc while using your label in the names of system /nix/store paths,
GRUB and other boot loaders' menus, getty greetings and so on.
This commit adds the options --build-host and --target-host to nixos-rebuild.
--build-host instructs nixos-rebuild to perform all nix builds on the
specified host (via ssh). Build results are then copied back to the
local machine and used when activating the system.
--build-target instructs nixos-rebuild to activate the configuration
not on the local machine but on the specified remote host. Build
results are copied to the target machine and then activated there (via ssh).
It is possible to combine the usage of --build-host and --target-host,
in which case you can perform the build on one remote machine and deploy
the configuration to another remote machine. The only requirement is that
the build host has a working ssh connection to the target host (if the
target is not local), and that the local machine can connect to both
the target and the build host. Also, your user must be allowed to copy
nix closures between the local machine and the target and host machines.
At no point in time are the configuration sources (the nix files) copied
anywhere. Instead, nix evaluation always happens locally
(with nix-instantiate). The drv-file is then copied and realised remotely
(with nix-store).
As a convenience, if only --target-host is specified, --build-host is
implicitly set to that host too. So if you want to build locally and deploy
remotely you have to explicitly set "--build-host localhost".
To activate (test, boot or switch) you need to have root access to the
target host. You can specify this by "--target-host root@myhost".
I have tested the obvious scenarios and they are working. Some of the
combinations of --build-host and --target-host and the various actions might
not make much sense, and should maybe be forbidden (like setting a remote
target host when building a VM), and some combinations might not work at all.
We seem to be in an unfortunate situation: booting without 'nomodeset'
causes hangs when booting on some NVIDIA cards (6948c3ab80), but on the
other hand adding 'nomodeset' prevents X from starting on other hardware
(e.g. issue #10381 and my Thinkpad X250 with an integrated Broadwell GPU).
Attempt to remedy this situation a bit by adding a separate entry in the
ISOLINUX menu (with the non-'nomodeset' being the default).
Since commits 89e9837 and 5b8dae8 the manual no longer depends on
evaluation of any packages from nixpkgs, so all errors of the form
"Package 'foo' is not supported on 'armv7l-linux'" are gone.
I needed to add sdhci_acpi and mmc_block to my initrd modules in order to boot
my Chromebook. Looking under /sys/class/mmc_host/*/device/driver/module will
give us the sdhci_acpi dependency.
This makes the firmware available (or would, if someone switched off
enableAllFirmware). Corresponding kernel module should get auto-loaded.
See #9948. Close#9971.
If nixos-install is run on a machine with `nix.distributedBuilds = true`
the installation will fail at some point like this:
Died at /nix/store/4frhrl31cl7iahlz6vyvysy5dmr6xnh3-nix-1.10/libexec/nix/build-remote.pl line 115, <STDIN> line 1.
This is due to `nix.distributedBuilds` setting
NIX_BUILD_HOOK=/nix/store/.../build-remote.pl in the global environment,
which then gets confused in the minimal chroot created by nixos-install.
To avoid these kinds of issues with build hooks, just disable them in
the chroot.
Avoids this warning when running `nixos-rebuild switch`:
````
building Nix...
building the system configuration...
trace: Obsolete option `services.virtualboxGuest.enable' is used. It was renamed to `virtualisation.virtualbox.guest.enable'.
````
This option requests compatibility with older NixOS releases with
respect to stateful data, in cases where new releases have defaults
that might be incompatible with system state of existing NixOS
deployments. For instance, if we change the default version of
PostgreSQL, existing deployments will break if the new version can't
read databases created by the old version.
So for example, setting
system.stateVersion = "15.07";
requests that options like services.postgresql.package use defaults
corresponding to the 15.07 release branch. Note that
nixos-generate-config emits this option. (In the future, NixOps may
set system.stateVersion to the NixOS release in use when the machine
was created.)
See also #7939 for another motivating example.
The resulting image can be copied to a SD card with `dd` and is directly
bootable by a suitably configured U-Boot. Though depending on the board, some
extra steps are required for copying U-Boot itself to the SD card.
Inside the image is a partition table, with a FAT32 /boot and a normal
writable EXT4 rootfs. It's possible to directly reuse the SD image's
partition layout and "install" NixOS on the same SD card by replacing
the default configuration.nix and nixos-rebuild, and actually is the
preferred way to use these images. To assist in this installation
method, the boot scripts on the image automatically resize the rootfs
partition to fit the SD card on the first boot.
The SD images come in two flavors; one for the ARMv6 Raspberry Pi,
and one multiplatform image for all the boards supported by the
mainline kernel's multi_v7_defconfig config target. At the moment, these
have been tested on:
- Raspberry Pi Model B (512MB model)
- NVIDIA Jetson TK1
- Linksprite pcDuino3 Nano
To build, run:
nix-build '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -A config.system.build.sdImage \
-I nixos-config='<nixpkgs/nixos/modules/installer/cd-dvd/sd-image-armv7l-multiplatform.nix>'
It comes in handy to alter the menu label if you're not building a NixOS
installer image but for example if you want to build a live system and
still want to re-use the iso-image.nix module.
Signed-off-by: aszlig <aszlig@redmoonstudios.org>
Should fix at least nixos.tests.installer.simple.x86_64-linux
http://hydra.nixos.org/build/23001712:
machine# error: cannot download Encode-Locale-1.03.tar.gz from any mirror
machine# builder for ‘/nix/store/y8gbx2d2fdcvvjy1z53xksfgq66ydlx0-Encode-Locale-1.03.tar.gz.drv’ failed with exit code 1
machine# cannot build derivation ‘/nix/store/y1knci7rix3asnh2b4kfv8jhl2j99xih-perl-Encode-Locale-1.03.drv’: 1 dependencies couldn't be built
machine# cannot build derivation ‘/nix/store/7xspjwh48kg16drv1jjg5cffaqbxbp8p-perl-libwww-perl-6.05.drv’: 1 dependencies couldn't be built
machine# cannot build derivation ‘/nix/store/8qsmz3bbk1jwhh50c3i9700bkmn8ns5c-nss-cacert-3.19.1.drv’: 1 dependencies couldn't be built
machine# cannot build derivation ‘/nix/store/0rgf2l3mdszs4a989ympwc9gk2k8wq6z-nixos-artwork-e71b684.drv’: 1 dependencies couldn't be built
...
Commit 159fed47bc (nixos/grub: Fix video display on efi) changed BIOS
systems to start in non-text mode as well. Enable FB_VESA to get a
framebuffer console on BIOS systems. Change FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE to 'y'
instead of the default 'm' to so the user doesn't need to manually load
the fbcon module anymore.
Other distros have similar defaults, at least on Arch:
CONFIG_FB_VESA=y
CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y
and on Ubuntu (12.04):
CONFIG_FB_VESA=m
CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y
Fixes#8139
