Nixos 22.05 installation process record

Recently installed a NixOS 22.05 The computer as the main system , Record the installation process .（ At the time of writing this article ,NixOS The latest version of is NixOS 22.05）

1  Preparing the installation disk

You need an Internet connected computer to prepare NixOS Installation disk of . This computer needs to be Linux perhaps MacOS,Windows If the system has been installed WSL（Linux Subsystem ） It's fine too , Because we need to use it later

dd

This command line tool is used to make the installation disk .

On this computer , Use the download tool from

NixOS The official download address of

 https://nixos.org/download.html  hold NixOS Of iso Download the file locally .NixOS 22.05 Of iso File size is 2GB about .

While waiting for the download , You can read

NixOS Manuals （ english ）

：https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/ 

When the download is complete , You need to prepare a blank sheet U disc , Plug in USB Interface .

open Linux perhaps MacOS Command line tools for （ For example, the system comes with Terminal）, Use

dd

The command will be downloaded iso File output to your U On the disk ：

dd if= Just downloaded iso File path  of=/dev/ Yours U Disk file path

After the copy is done , Yours USB The installation disk is ready . Unplug spare .

2  Enter the installation disk

You need an Internet connected computer for installation NixOS My target computer .

Insert... On the target computer USB Mounting plate , Plug in the cable .（NixOS The installation process of requires networking , The installation disk may not recognize the wireless network , So the plug-in cable is the most reliable ）

After power on, enter BIOS Set the interface , Make two settings ：1、 Set the startup sequence to USB first ;2、 close SecureBoot（ If you have this option ）.

After setting up , Save and exit .

If all goes well , The computer will restart and enter USB On the installation disk NixOS, And enter its graphical installation interface by default .

My lesson is ： Do not use this graphical installation interface . This graphical installation interface does not show the progress of the installation at all , Show only one progress bar , If the installation process gets stuck , You can't see where it's stuck . It is recommended to directly click Cancel Button to close the graphical installation interface .

3  Disk partition

Now partition the disk . We use the... Provided with the installation disk GParted Graphical tools to create zones .

Swing the mouse to the upper left corner of the screen , A row of software icons will appear at the bottom of the screen . find GParted, Click the icon to open it .

To build a 512MiB The size of FAT32 Partition , Used to mount  /boot  Catalog .

To build a EXT4 Format primary partition , Used to mount /  root directory . The primary partition can be allocated the size according to its own needs .

To build a 8GiB The size of linux-swap Partition .（ This swap Partition if your computer memory is large enough, you can actually do without configuration ）

stay GParted After the partition is created , Apply changes .

thus , Disk partition completed . Record the paths of the three partitions for backup .（ For example, the paths I generate here are  /dev/nvme0n1p1 /dev/nvme0n1p2 /dev/nvme0n1p3）

4  Configure the installation path

Now you need to open the terminal for command line operation .

Swing the mouse to the upper left corner of the screen , Find... In the software icon at the bottom of the screen “ terminal / Console ”, Click the icon to open it .

Enter the instructions in turn ：

sudo -i

mount /dev/ You just created EXT4 Partition path  /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mount /dev/ You just created FAT32 Partition path  /mnt/boot
swapon /dev/ You just created LinuxSwap Partition path

nixos-generate-config --root /mnt

After this step , You can edit it manually nixos Configuration file for

/mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix

. By default, the installation disk provides nano Editor .

5  edit nixos The configuration file

configuration.nix

The configuration file is nixos The essence of , The system configuration and software installation you want can be written here .

You can contrast

nixos Manuals

Editing ：https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/index.html#ch-configuration 

The manual also provides a

Options query document

：https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/options.html 

For Chinese users , More important is the configuration related to Chinese support , Here are my related configurations posted for reference ：

time.timeZone = "Asia/Shanghai";

i18n.defaultLocale = "zh_CN.UTF-8";

i18n.inputMethod = {
 enabled = "ibus";
 ibus.engines = with pkgs.ibus-engines; [ libpinyin ];
};

nix.settings.substituters = [ "https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/nix-channels/store" ];

If you are right about nixos You are not familiar with , The configuration file section can be skipped first . In the future nixos Play , This configuration file is full of opportunities to do .

6  install

Input instruction ：

nixos-install

After the return ,nixos It's time to install , You can see the progress of the installation on the console . The whole installation will take about ten minutes .

nixos After installation , The installer will ask you to enter root password ：

setting root password...
New password: ***
Retype new password: ***

Put your root Enter the password twice to complete .

7  Restart the computer

Input instruction ：

reboot

After reboot , You will enter the startup selection interface , wait for 5 Seconds or press enter to enter the one you just installed nixos System .

above ,NixOS 22.05 Installation completed ！

Installed NixOS You can edit

configuration.nix

Document and

nixos-rebuild

The command continues to customize . A configuration file can customize a system , And each customization can generate an independent version that can be accessed , If you encounter problems, you can directly restart and return to the boot interface to rollback to the previous version , It is said that this design is especially friendly to students who need to maintain many machines or need to change machines frequently .