nixos doc: document the installation process from other distros as well as NIXOS_LUSTRATE #36272
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Rebased over the |
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…ll as NIXOS_LUSTRATE
Not doing so makes it impossible to use nixos-enter from a non-NixOS distro
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Tested again on Ubuntu with |
| system=/nix/var/nix/profiles/system | ||
| command=($system/sw/bin/bash "--login") |
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@edolstra — just FYI, I've added added full paths to bash in nixos-enter
| root partition to <literal>/old-root</literal>. This will move | ||
| your existing distribution out of the way in the very early | ||
| stages of the NixOS bootup. There are exceptions (we do need to | ||
| keep NixOS there after all), so the NixOS lustrate process will |
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AFAICT the manual doesn't say what "lustrate" means, and it's not a perfectly cromulent word down our way.
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| <listitem> | ||
| <para>It's also worth noting that this whole process can be | ||
| automated. This is especially useful for Cloud VMs, where |
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If it can be automated, then isn't it better to do that, rather than document how people can do it manually (and probably make mistakes)?
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So this is kind of like the fact that we can easily deploy a cloud-based NixOS VM with a one-liner, but installing a desktop takes a few more steps. Similarly, a script that wipes out your existing distro and replace it by NixOS on a desktop is probably not that useful.
That's not to say there aren't a few steps that could be fused into a script but I think the majority of the steps need to be exposed individually.
Also when installing from other distros, I've found thatNo longer the case with thenixos-installdoesn't find
[when chrooting so adding full path to it.nix-2.0branch mergedMotivation for this change
The
NIXOS_LUSTRATEfeature has been undocumented since it was committed in #17784 (the only documentation was really in the git commit message and github PR).Installing from a NixOS device is the default but it's also possible to install from other distros (since Nix works on just about any distro), so I've also documented the steps to do that.
Both ways of installing successfully tested on Ubuntu VMs.
Things done
build-use-sandboxinnix.confon non-NixOS)nix-shell -p nox --run "nox-review wip"./result/bin/)