dotfiles

A continuously updated reproducable config for:

• a desktop workstation
• a mail server running in AWS
• a 3D-printer controller running on a Raspberry Pi 4
• a laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad)
• a router (old DELL Optiplex machine)
• a Nix binary cache server running on a Raspberry Pi 5

Where everything about my systems are controlled by NixOS, in every last excruciating detail, making for a perfectly-configured install every time. No longer will we have to suffer through hours of 'oops I forgot to install X' or 'oops I forgot to copy/simlink/create file Y' every new install, because it was already configured in the NixOS config, down to the seconds on the clock!

Table of Contents

• Desktop Screenshots
• Installation
• Troubleshooting
• Tasks

Desktop Screenshots

Installation

Boot from NixOS installation media

Tip

Using the minimal installation media is recommended, as it is smaller and faster to download. However, you cannot use network manager (nmtui) to setup wireless networking with the minimal image.

Set up internet

Note

If you already have a wired connection, you can skip this step.

sudo systemctl start wpa_supplicant
sudo wpa_cli
> add_network
> set_network 0 ssid "your_ssid_here"
> set_network 0 psk "your_password_here"
> enable_network 0
> save_config
> quit

Partition and format

Caution

This deletes your data, check drive names carefully.

cfdisk /dev/drivename

Now, delete all partitions on the disk and create the new partitions:

• A 525M "EFI System" partition,
• a "Linux Swap" partition,
• and a generic "Linux Filesystem" partition to fill the rest of the disk.

First, format the EFI System partition with FAT:

mkfs.fat -F 32 -n boot /dev/drivename1

Then, format the swap partition, giving it the label of 'swap':

mkswap -L swap /dev/drivename2

And finally, format the main Linux Filesystem partition with ext4, giving it the label of 'nixos':

mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/drivename3

These drive labels are used by the system config in fileSystems.nix to avoid hardcoding drive UUIDs.

Mount to edit.

To edit the contents of the disk, it needs to be mounted into a folder. First, mount the main Linux Filesystem:

mount /dev/whatever3 /mnt # Mount root filesystem

Then, mount the boot filesystem:

mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mount /dev/whatever1 /mnt/boot # Mount boot partition

Finally, enable the swap:

swapon /dev/whatever2 # Use the swap partition

First system install.

Generate example configuration as referance.

nixos-generate-config --root ./

Note

Copy unique parts of the autogenerated hardware-configuration.nix to the hardware.nix of the system to ensure compatibilty with hardware.

Download this repo. This is stored in a tmpfs, so it will be lost on reboot.

nix-shell -p git
git clone https://github.com/headblockhead/dotfiles.git

Warning

Changes made to this copy of the dotfiles are not saved, so copy changes to the /mnt folder or other means of persistance to avoid pain later.

Build and install. Set a root password, it can be anything as we will disable direct root in a minute.

cd dotfiles
nixos-install --root /mnt --flake .#HOSTNAME
reboot

Set password and lock root

Use a TTY shell to login as root, then set the user password.

passwd headb

Finally, delete the password for the root user and lock the root account.

sudo passwd -dl root
sudo usermod -L root

Troubleshooting

Missing boot option

Try re-installing the bootloader from installation media. Or move EFI files to generic locations for old BIOSes:

mv /boot/EFI/NixOS-boot /boot/EFI/boot
mv /boot/EFI/boot/grubx64.efi /boot/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi

No display output after GRUB

Try adding nomodeset to the kernel parameters in GRUB.

Tasks

Switch

Requires: switch-nixos, switch-home-manager

Switch to the new nixos and home-manager configurations.

Deploy

Deploy the nixos configurations to all machines with deploy-rs.

deploy path:.# -s

Switch-NixOS

Switch to the new nixos configuration.

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .# --accept-flake-config

Switch-home-manager

Switch to the new home-manager configuration for the current user.

home-manager switch --flake ".#$USER@`hostname`" 

Garbage-collect

Cleanup unused nix store paths, then print a summary.

nix-collect-garbage --quiet

Garbage-collect-delete

Deletes all but the current generation of NixOS and cleanup leftovers, then print a summary.

sudo nix-collect-garbage -d --quiet