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Install

We follow the UEFI part of the official Installation Guide:
NixOS Installation Guide.

Prepare Disk

Partitioning

Partition the storage using sudo fdisk /dev/sdb. In the interactive prompt partition the storage those settings:

  • g (gpt disk label)
  • n
  • 1 (partition number [1/128])
  • 2048 first sector
  • +500M last sector (boot sector size)
  • t
  • 1 (EFI System)
  • n
  • 2
  • default (fill up partition)
  • default (fill up partition)
  • w (write)

Delete all Files on partitions with:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1 bs=4096 status=progress
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb2 bs=4096 status=progress

Label partitions

Label the partitions using those commands:

sudo mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sda1
sudo fatlabel /dev/sda1 NIXBOOT
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2 -L NIXROOT

Mount partitions

Mount the boot and root drives so we can access them and install NixOS:

sudo mount /dev/disk/by-label/NIXROOT /mnt
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/boot
sudo mount /dev/disk/by-label/NIXBOOT /mnt/boot

Create swap file

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/.swapfile bs=1024 count=2097152 # 2GB size
sudo chmod 600 /mnt/.swapfile
sudo mkswap /mnt/.swapfile
sudo swapon /mnt/.swapfile

Install Nixos

Create NixOS config

Generate the config using sudo nixos-generate-config --root /mnt.

Then, edit the config using sudo vim /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix.

Here are some sections of the configuration you should add:

  # Keyboard layout
  services.xserver.xkb.layout = "de";

  # Add a user!
  users.users.elias = {
    isNormalUser = true;
    extraGroups = [ "wheel" ]; # Sudo access
  };

  # Install an editor to edit the configuration
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ vim ]; # or vim!

To edit the hardware config, use sudo vim /mnt/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix.

You can then update the file systems to use labels and add the swapfile.

  fileSystems."/" =
    { device = "/dev/disk/by-label/NIXROOT";
      # ...
    };

  fileSystems."/boot" =
    { device = "/dev/disk/by-label/NIXBOOT";
      # ...
    };

  swapDevices = [{
    device = "/.swapfile";
    size = 2048; # 2GB
  }];

Install

cd /mnt
sudo nixos-install

Change password with passwd to a password that works on de and en keyboard layout.

Reboot into the installed NixOs.

Add those lines to the configuration.nix file:

nix.settings.experimental-features = ["nix-command" "flakes" ];

networking.hostName = "eliasDesktop"; #or eiasLaptop for other configs

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  vim
  git
];

Rebuild the system with sudo nixos-rebuild switch and reboot to update the Hostname.

Copy the config repo with git clone https://github.com/4Lost/nixos-config and move it to /etc/nixos and rebuild with sudo nixos-rebuild switch.

Change github to ssh setting for pushing and pulling. Change the following lines in   to:

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