Bootstrap a zfs-on-root NixOS configuration in one command.

• Automatically installs zfs and git to the livedisk if needed.
• Clones your git repo, optionally using a non-master branch.
• Finds your configuration.sh file automatically.
• Configures a basic ZFS system according to your configuration.sh file specification:
  • Use sgdisk and/or wipefs, or dd to clear your disks.
  • Create a single/mirror/raidz1/raidz2/raidz3 zpool.
  • Install a bootloader to each disk in the pool.
  • Creates generate and import /etc/nixos/zfs-configuration.nix which includes sensible settings for zfs-on-root.
  • Optionally enable "zfs-extra" for further zfs-support options.
• Generates an /etc/nixos/configuration.nix which imports your top-level-nixfile from your repo-- (and thereby nixos-install's the rest of your operating system.)
• Aims to fail gracefully with continue and retry options.
• Legacy and UEFI are now both supported.
• ZFS native-encryption is now an option in configuration.sh

• 300 lines of code removed [cleaned / simplified] with fewer configuration variables...

• Native ZFS encryption is an official option.

To use zfs encryption, you will need a nixos installation ISO that includes ZFS version 0.8 or higher. There is information how to build such an ISO at the bottom of this README.md page.

• Identical GRUB and partioning schemes are now used for both UEFI and LEGACY.

• For legacy users, /boot is kept in sync across multiple disks. For this reason, legacy BIOS is still recommended [for computers that support it] > UEFI. Simply put: legacy is more robust than UEFI.

• From a NixOS LiveDisk VM,

[root@nixos:~] bash <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/a-schaefers/themelios/master/themelios) vm-example a-schaefers/themelios

This command executes the script with curl and bash, which in turn downloads the a-schaefers/themelios repo from github, finds the "vm-example" directory with a configuration.sh file and begins the bootstrap process.

Configuration.sh may actually be named anything you want and located anywhere in your project, Themelios will search for $1 by filename first and find it automatically, provided it is a uniquely named file.

If the filename isn't found, then Themelios will search for directories by the same name. So if you prefer using a standard naming convention, put a literal "configuration.sh" file inside of a uniquely named directory and feed Themelios the unique directory name. The example "Try it init a VM right now!" command of this repository uses this method:

# vm-example is not a file inside this repo, but is a directory-- so this finds the dir hosts/vm-example/ and loads thel literal "configuration.sh" file.
[root@nixos:~] themelios vm-example a-schaefers/themelios

If none of this works for you, just tell themelios where the file is relative to project root:

[root@nixos:~] themelios ./hosts/vm-example/configuration.sh https://github.com/a-schaefers/themelios.git master

NOTE: The username/repo-name shortcut only works for Github repos. Non-Github repos must provide the full remote.

TL;DR. Feed Themelios a git repository url that contains a configuration.sh file:

While Themelios aims to fail gracefully, if the initial bootstrap fails and if there is not an error in your nix files, one commonly known cause of failure is use of fetchTarball. Using fetchTarball does not work during new NixOS installations. This is not Themelios' fault! Here's the NixOS bug that is already reported: NixOS/nix#2405

At present, if the bootstrap fails due to home-manager, I comment out home-manager section of my configuration in /mnt during the initial bootstrap. Once rebooted, (and so out of the chroot), then I uncomment it and nixos-rebuild switch again.

Save the following somewhere on an already existing NixOS install as iso.nix:

{config, pkgs, ...}:
let
  themelios = pkgs.writeScriptBin "themelios" ''
    bash <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/a-schaefers/themelios/master/themelios) $@
  '';
in {
  imports = [
    <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/installer/cd-dvd/installation-cd-minimal.nix>
    <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/installer/cd-dvd/channel.nix>
  ];
   networking = {
    networkmanager.enable = true;
    wireless.enable = false; #networkmanager.enable handles this
  };
    boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "zfs" ];
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ git themelios ];

  # uncomment below if you need 0.8 encryption
  # boot.zfs.enableUnstable = true;
}

And build it!

nix-build '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -A config.system.build.isoImage -I nixos-config=iso.nix